(CALMATTERS) – This week, lawmakers will consider several measures that have taken on newfound significance amid widespread protests over racism and calls for criminal justice reform.
One bill requiring Cal State University students to complete an ethnic studies course is already headed to the governor’s desk. And two proposed amendments to the California Constitution will appear on the November ballot if approved by lawmakers this week.
One amendment would grant California parolees the right to vote, while the other would reinstate affirmative action policies in public education, contracting and hiring that voters revoked in 1996. Both measures are top priorities for the Legislative Black Caucus. African Americans make up 26% of California’s parolee population but only 6% of the state’s adults.
- Assemblyman Kevin McCarty, the Sacramento Democrat who wrote ACA 6, the parole voting measure: “Parolees are many times working, paying taxes, raising their family, doing right. And they can’t vote on policies that affect their lives.”
As CalMatters’ Laurel Rosenhall and Adria Watson report, the parole measure is promoted by 31-year-old Esteban Núñez, son of a former Speaker of the California Assembly, who was convicted for his role in the 2008 killing of 22-year-old college student Luis Santos.
Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2011 reduced Núñez’s sentence from 16 years to seven, a decision that angered Santos’ parents and others who said Núñez’s political connections allowed him to circumvent justice.
Núñez now works for a criminal justice nonprofit, advocating for bills like ACA 6 to help give the incarcerated a second chance.
- Núñez: “I think I do have a unique opportunity to use the doors that my father has worked hard to open, for the greater good” and help “other people in the way that I was helped.”
- Fred Santos, Luis’ father: “I don’t think people that committed violent crimes should be allowed to vote. Because they violated other citizens’ rights, they should not have their rights. … The pain doesn’t go away. We are serving a life sentence.”
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