California's Reparations Plan Faces Legal and Social Challenges

The California Reparations Task Force has approved a set of recommendations for how the state can make amends to its Black residents for slavery and the decades of racial discrimination that followed. However, the recommendations may never come to fruition due to legal issues. The task force's final report includes a set of mathematical formulas used to figure out how much is owed to residents based on certain factors, including their age, how long they've lived in California, and the specific type of harm they've suffered. Legal experts have raised concerns about the legal viability of reparations, particularly the ancestry requirement, which would apply to about 80% of all Black residents in California.