Home>Articles>Californians for Equal Rights Foundation Announces Intent to Sue San Francisco Over Guaranteed Income Programs

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Californians for Equal Rights Foundation Announces Intent to Sue San Francisco Over Guaranteed Income Programs

‘It’s cartoonishly unconstitutional for San Francisco and its co-conspirators to so blatantly distribute public resources based on race’

By Katy Grimes, March 22, 2023 8:29 am

Californians for Equal Rights Foundation and American Civil Rights Project, on Tuesday notified San Francisco city and county, the San Francisco Unified School District, the University of California San Francisco and the California Health and Human Services Agency their intent to sue over guaranteed-income programs.

They argue that the four guaranteed-income programs are discriminatory, violate Proposition 209 [California State Constitution Article I Section 31(a)], violate the 14thAmendment to the U.S. Constitution, as well as Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

The four San Francisco guaranteed-income programs CFER is challenging include:

  1. The Abundant Birth Project (APB), which provides unconditional cash supplements (up to $1,000) to Black and Pacific Islander mothers as a strategy to reduce preterm birth and improve economic outcomes for our communities.
  2. The Guaranteed Income for Trans People (GIFT), which provides low-income transgender San Franciscans with $1,200 each month, up to 18 months, with priority given to Black, Indigenous or People of Color (BIPOC) applicants.
  3. The Guaranteed Income Pilot for Artists (GIPA), which provides 190 artists of particular races and gender expressions monthly payments of $1,000 for up to 18 months.
  4. The Black Economic Equity Movement (BEEM), which selects 300 Black young adults ages 18 to 24 to receive $500 per month for one year.

“It’s cartoonishly unconstitutional for San Francisco and its co-conspirators to so blatantly distribute public resources based on race,” explained ACR Project Executive Director Dan Morenoff. “No serious person could look at any of these programs and tell you with a straight face that they satisfy strict scrutiny. Thankfully, California has a mechanism for its people to shut down obviously illegal programs, when their governments choose to ignore such well known facts.”

“The California Constitution unambiguously prohibits public agencies from treating individuals differently on the basis of race,” said Frank Xu, president of CFER. “But these entities ignore the law and offer race-preferential programs under the disguise of equity. We are proud to participate in this request to halt these programs immediately and we will sue them if they don’t back down.”

San Francisco also has the San Francisco Guaranteed Income Plan for Artists in collaboration with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts. The letter says:

San Francisco launched the San Francisco Guaranteed Income Plan for Artists in collaboration with the Yerba Buena Center for the Arts (“YBCA”). The program was and is designed to transfer $1,000.00 per month to each participating artist.

The YCBA program has since rebranded and extended for additional years as the Creative Communities Coalition for Guaranteed Income. At its initial launch, San Francisco described the program as one benefitting San Francisco’s resident artists, without indicating the existence of any demographic eligibility criteria for the program.

However, YBCA’s website discloses that “[i]n collaboration with San Francisco Mayor London Breed, YBCA… implement[ed] the San Francisco Guaranteed Income Plan for Artists” in racially defined “communities[.]” YBCA left no room for misunderstanding either the degree to which that “implementation” was racially targeted or the genesis of the particulars of that implementation in California’s legal landscape.1

Throughout, then, San Francisco has been funding this program, with public dollars, while the program intentionally uses proxies to select recipients based on their race, ethnicity, sex, sexuality, and gender.

The CFER explains: “In 1996, via the passage of Proposition 209, over 55% of California voters voted to codify the state constitutional ban on racial preferences. In 2020, 9.65 million Californians reaffirmed this commitment to equal protection by striking down Prop. 16. While the California Constitution unambiguously prohibits public agencies from treating individuals differently on the basis of race, many state agencies have chosen to disregard the principle and offer race-preferential programs under the disguise of equity.”

You can read the CFER letter here.

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9 thoughts on “Californians for Equal Rights Foundation Announces Intent to Sue San Francisco Over Guaranteed Income Programs

  1. we need “equalizers ask a sociologist an nthropologist,anda psychologist why voters voted against race preferences… then re search the reconstruction era of our beloved american history

  2. Suggest you consider changing headline to clearly indicate suit is over discriminatory guaranteed income programs. When I first saw it I thought suit was because they wanted guaranteed income programs.

    1. Nazi hatred of Jews was both racial and religious. Democrat hatred for whites is primarily the result of ethnomasochism. Ethnomasochism is almost exclusively a Caucasian mental disorder.

  3. It seems as if “reparations” falls into the same category. Unconstitutional and therefore illegal.

  4. The real issue is that all the people involved in passing this kind of funding, distributing the funding, and managing the plans are part of a CONSPIRACY UNDER RICO to violate the civil rights of other classes as well as theft and conversion of Government Funds.
    This should make each and every person involved, every government agent and department involved part of the Criminal act itself. This would include any city or for profit or non-profit organizations as well as any attorney for any of the above listed government or non-government agents as well as any elected officials involved.
    A violation of RICO automatically ends “qualified immunity” for ALL actors and makes them subject to TRIPLE DAMAGES to the PUBLIC.
    To be CLEAR this is exactly why we are a REPUBLIC not a DEMOCRACY and this is why the “Democrats” want us to dissolve the REPUBLIC isn favor or their version ….democracy. Democracy always ends the same way….a politician promises “free ice cream for everyone every Friday if you elect their representatives”. And they usually get elected for promising to STEAL MONEY from someone to buy that ice cream.
    Make this suit a RICO act, remember that each and every organization involved in all of these programs combined is a RICO actor, each program and the conglomerate of programs are all violations and every elected official that voted for them are actors as well. All deserve PRISON time for conversion of government assets under RICO. This also means that all actions are in FEDERAL COURTS.
    Place me on the jury, I will award all costs and damages severally against all agencies universities and participants at EVERY LEVEL, plus the mandatory triple damages PERSONALLY for every player, including elected officials, no immunity and no BS. The Feds can actually make arrests and felony convictions for this as well.

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