By: Bella Tambornino
California’s Race-Blind Charging Act promises a bold experiment in criminal justice reform: a prosecutorial process free from racial bias. Enacted in September 2022 through Assembly Bill 2778 (“AB 2778”), the law requires prosecutors to make charging decisions “based on information, from which all means of identifying the race of the suspect, victim, or witness have been removed or redacted.”[1] This law aims to “blind” race from the equation in hopes that racial bias will be eliminated as a result. Despite these aspirational efforts, the question stands: can race truly be blinded in a system that is historically shaped by it?
Background
TheCaliforniaLegislature passed AB 2778 amid the increasing evidence that “unknowing or ‘unconscious’ bias may infect many decisions within the criminal justice system, despite what may be the best intentions of the actors involved.”[2] Drawing from behavioral studies, which emphasize that “blinding” decision-makers can reduce discriminatory bias in hiring and peer review, lawmakers concluded that a similar approach could be adopted to “increase community confidence in the charging process.”[3]
As of January 1, 2025, all California prosecutorial offices are required to implement race-blind charging practices.[4] First, a prosecutor with no knowledge of the case must conduct an initial charging evaluation based on redacted information that removes racial identifiers from police reports, criminal histories, and narratives.[5] The prosecutor must then determine whether the individual in the case should be charged.[6] A second, unredacted review follows, and any change in the charging decision must be documented in the case record.[7] Each agency may exclude certain crimes, such as homicides and hate crimes, from a race-blind initial charging evaluation, but the list of exclusions and reasons for them must be made available to the Department of Justice and the general public.[8]
The policy was first adopted by the Yolo County District Attorney’s Office, where District Attorney Jeff Reisig partnered with Stanford University’s Computational Policy Lab in 2021 to pilot an algorithm that redacts racial identifiers from police reports.[9] The program required prosecutors to record preliminary charging decisions before viewing unredacted information, creating a record of their unexposed decision-making.[10] Reisig describes the initiative as an effort to bring impartial justice to life, creating a technological “blindfold” designed to prevent implicit bias from influencing the earliest stages of prosecution.[11]
The Yolo County model has become the foundation for the statewide system of race-blind charging, but its implementation has faced challenges.[12] For many California prosecutorial offices, “concerns remain, particularly about funding and implementation, and whether race-blind charging might inadvertently hinder other reforms that depend on recognizing racial disparities.”[13] For example, San Francisco District Attorney Brooke Jenkins estimated that her office would need an additional $1.4 million to fund the necessary software and staffing to launch a race-blind charging system.[14] Smaller counties face even greater resource limitations, raising questions regarding whether race-blind charging technology can be achieved without substantial institutional investment.[15]
Blinding Bias or Preserving It?
At first glance, the Race-Blind Charging Act is a step in the right direction. Yet, scholars warn that colorblind systems may disguise inequality rather than completely erase it. Professor Hannah Shaffer argues that some prosecutors consciously use their discretion to mitigate racial disparities in charging and sentencing.[16] Her empirical study of 336,000 North Carolina Superior Court cases revealed that “prosecutors who attribute racial disparities … to racial bias have lower prison rates for Black defendants with criminal records than facially similar white defendants.”[17] In other words, when prosecutors are aware of racial bias, they sometimes adjust their decisions to counterbalance it.
Shaffer cautions that race-blind policies may unintentionally increase disparities by neutralizing the offsetting effects of some prosecutors.[18] Without visibility into race, prosecutors lose the ability to recognize and correct disparities that may arise from broader systemic inequalities. This finding exposes a deeper flaw in AB 2778—the belief that fairness can be achieved through ignorance. In a system that is already inherently shaped by racialized policing, sentencing, and criminal histories, removing race does not erase bias; it simply conceals it. Shaffer ultimately argues that progress does not lie in eliminating prosecutorial discretion, but in empowering prosecutors to use their discretion to address the structural inequities that race-blind charging policies risk preserving.[19]
The False Comfort of Neutrality
The Race-Blind Charging Act is a meaningful step toward reducing bias in prosecutorial charging decisions. By redacting racial identifiers, California aims to make charging decisions more objective and consistent across cases. This neutrality can promote fairness and rebuild public trust in a system long shown to have many flaws. But, as Shaffer notes, race-blindness can come at a cost. Some prosecutors knowingly use their discretion to counteract systemic inequities, and removing race entirely may eliminate that corrective role. Reform that focuses solely on neutrality risks overlooking the deeper structural biases that shape the criminal justice process. Further, Reisig has emphasized that race-blind charging practices were adopted to ensure justice is administered without regard to race.[20] That vision is admirable, but as Shaffer points out, achieving fairness also requires awareness of the disparities already built into the system.
Conclusion
California’s Race-Blind Charging Act represents progress in addressing racial bias within prosecutorial charging decisions, but it also exposes the limitations of colorblind reform. The law’s blindfolded approach may limit individual prejudice, yet it cannot undo the racialized structures that influence charging decisions before a case ever reaches a prosecutor’s desk. The true measure of AB 2778 lies not in pretending race no longer matters, but in showing that prosecutors can acknowledge race without allowing it to dictate justice. If California can achieve that balance, it could move prosecutorial offices closer to the ideal of justice they were meant to serve.
[1] Assemb. B. 2778, 2021-2022 Leg., Reg. Sess. (2022).
[2] Id. at § 1(a).
[3] Id. at § 1(b)-(c).
[4] Cal. Penal Code § 741(b)(1) (2022).
[5] Cal. Penal Code § 741(b)(2) (2022).
[6] Id.
[7] Cal. Penal Code § 741(b)(3) (2022).
[8] Cal. Penal Code § 741(c) (2022).
[9] Marco Poggio, Seven Months In, Race-Blind Charging Faces Test In Calif., LAW360 (July 18, 2025, at 15:17 EST), https://www.law360.com/articles/2353097 [https://perma.cc/R892-C9N3].
[10] Luke Cleary, Yolo County DA announces ‘Race Blind Charging’ pilot program, ABC10 (Sept. 9, 2021, at 18:13 PST), https://www.abc10.com/article/news/crime/yolo-county-da-race-blind-charging-pilot-program/103-56f1d781-7893-47fa-8cef-f89669602fd2 [https://perma.cc/TNX5-JCJQ].
[11] Poggio, supra note 9.
[12] Id.
[13] Id.
[14] Id.
[15] See generally id.
[16] Hannah Shaffer, Prosecutors, Race, and the Criminal Pipeline, 90 U. Chi. L. Rev. 1889, 1892 (2023).
[17] Id. at 1889.
[18] Id. at 1944.
[19] Id. at 1964-65.
[20] Poggio, supra note 9.
