California governor Gavin Newsom vetoed a landmark but controversial bill passed by the state’s legislature that added caste to its basket of anti-discrimination legislation, arguing that the administration already barred discrimination across various dimensions, including caste, and the new legislation was unnecessary.

In a sign of the divide in the diaspora on the issue, Indian-American Hindu groups welcomed the governor’s decision, but prominent anti-caste and minority groups as well civil liberties bodies criticised Newsom.

Returning SB403 to the members of the California state senate on Saturday, Newsom, who is a prominent Democratic governor, said that the bill defines “ancestry” for the purposes of the Fair Employment and Housing Act, Unruh Act and the Education Act to include “caste”.

But, he added, “In California, we believe everyone deserves to be treated with dignity and respect, no matter who they are, where they come from, who they love, or where they live. That is why California already prohibits discrimination based on sex, race, colour, religion, ancestry, national origin, disability, gender identity, sexual orientation, and other characteristics, and state law specifies that these civil rights protections shall be liberally construed.”

Newsom said that because discrimination, “based on caste”, was already prohibited under these existing categories, the bill was “unnecessary”. “For this reason, I cannot sign this bill,” he noted.

In August, SB403 — which would add caste as an explicit category for anti-discrimination action in the state’s civil rights, education, and housing codes — passed by a margin of 50-3 in the California House, marking the first time an American legislature considered and cleared an anti-caste legislation.

The move was greeted with cheer and criticism.

“With the stroke of his pen, governor Newsom has averted a civil rights and constitutional disaster that would have put a target on hundreds of thousands of Californians simply because of their ethnicity or their religious identity, as well as create a slippery slope of facially discriminatory laws,” said Samir Kalra, managing director of Hindu American Foundation.

Equality Labs, the anti-caste group that led the efforts to pass the bill, said they were disappointed but not defeated.

“We are very proud of the power and resilience that caste-oppressed people across the state have shown in their advocacy for SB403. While it is heartbreaking to receive the governor’s veto, it is not a reflection of the incredible democratic power that our communities showed,” said Thenmozhi Soundarajan, the founder and executive director of Equality Labs.

The development and controversy around the bill is the latest in a string of moves that has spotlighted the presence of caste among the South Asian population in the US with a significant group of activists saying that birth-based biases continue to dog the diaspora. The battleground for several of these cases — especially the ones involving tech workers — has been California, which is America’s most-populous state with 39.2 million residents, of which nearly a million are Indian-American.

The veto came a week after Fresno followed Seattle in explicitly banning caste-based bias in employment, housing, public transport and retail establishments, among others. In December 2019, Brandeis University became the first US institution to include caste in its non-discrimination policy, and was followed by the California State University System, Harvard University, Brown University and the University of California, Davis.

But the bill also opened deep rifts within the Indian-American community with groups such as the HAF opposing such moves and expressing concern that it would be used to target Hindus.

“We at HAF have always said that any discrimination on the basis of ‘caste’ violates not only Hindu teachings, but also existing state and federal law. The fight over SB-403 has always been about the best solution for any intra-community discrimination, not whether such protections are needed,” said Suhag Shukla, executive director of HAF.

But advocates of the bill said they’ll continue to fight for protection against caste discrimination.

“Though governor Newsom has rejected the bill for now, we will continue to work alongside many Californians in labour, civil rights, and interfaith movements to ensure California’s opportunities are accessible for all going forward,” said Nirmal Singh from Californians for Caste Equity.