New Podcast: The Past, Present, and Future of the California Racial Justice Act

In the February 2025 episode of 12:01: The Death Penalty in Context, DPI Managing Director Anne Holsinger speaks with three experts on California’s Racial Justice Act (RJA). Natasha Minsker, an attor­ney and con­sul­tant, for­mer­ly of the ACLU, speaks on the his­to­ry of the RJA and the impe­tus for its pas­sage. Genevie Gold, research and writ­ing fel­low at the Office of the State Public Defender (OSPD), describes the process that an RJA claim fol­lows through the legal sys­tem, and how the RJA has affect­ed the work of OSPD. Avi Frey, a lawyer at the ACLU of Northern California, explains the poten­tial sys­temic effects of the RJA, which are just begin­ning to take shape as the leg­is­la­tion approach­es its fifth anniver­sary of passage.

Ms. Minsker describes the effort to enact a Racial Justice Act in California as a way ​“to bring civ­il rights law into the crim­i­nal courts in California.… We have civ­il rights laws address­ing pret­ty much every oth­er aspect of life – employ­ment, pub­lic accom­mo­da­tion, hous­ing – but we have no civ­il rights law for the crim­i­nal legal sys­tem, and so that is how we frame the California Racial Justice Act.” She also defines the four grounds for rais­ing a chal­lenge under the RJA: bias direct­ed at the per­son who was charged or con­vict­ed of a crime, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry lan­guage used at tri­al, racial­ly dis­crim­i­na­to­ry appli­ca­tion of the law, and racial dis­par­i­ties in sentencing.

Ms. Gold explains the prac­ti­cal­i­ties of bring­ing an RJA claim and also reflects on how it has prompt­ed those work­ing in crim­i­nal defense to reex­am­ine their own bias­es. The law con­sid­ers bias from all actors in the legal sys­tem, includ­ing wit­ness­es, judges, pros­e­cu­tors, and defense attor­neys. ​“What it’s required us to do is not just to look at the past — what … pre­vi­ous attor­neys have said that could vio­late the RJA,” Ms. Gold says, ​“but real­ly look at our cur­rent prac­tice, and how do we change what we do when we start to under­stand the role of things like implic­it bias and rhetoric when we’re talk­ing about the client, when we’re talk­ing about the clien­t’s com­mu­ni­ty … how we show up [for our clients] – that has been real­ly impor­tant to me, and [it is] some­thing that I think is a real­ly beau­ti­ful change that the RJA has brought about.”

Mr. Frey speaks about the ACLU’s involve­ment in RJA claims, includ­ing detail­ing their effort to bring a claim based on a fresh data set about racial dis­crim­i­na­tion that defen­dants across the state can also use in their claims. The ACLU study shows, he notes for exam­ple, that pros­e­cu­tors are more like­ly to seek the death penal­ty in rob­bery-mur­ders when the defen­dant is Black and the vic­tim is white. Mr. Frey also speaks about the impor­tance of hav­ing courts act as ​“ref­er­ee” when con­sid­er­ing the role of race in criminal cases.