Newsom vetoes California's transnational repression training bill

Who: California Governor Gavin Newsom; the Sikh Coalition, the Sikh American Legal Defense and Education Fund (SALDEF) and other backers; the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) and the Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA), who opposed the bill; and Assemblymember Jasmeet Bains, a Sikh Democrat who backed it.

What: SB 509 would have told the state's Office of Emergency Services to build training for police on recognising and responding to transnational repression, meaning a foreign government's intimidation, surveillance or harassment of its dissidents in California. The Senate passed it 38 to 0 on 3 June 2025 and the Assembly 47 to 0 on 10 September, with 21 members not voting. The estimated cost was $572,000 a year. Scroll lists the background: the June 2023 killing of Hardeep Singh Nijjar in Surrey, the plot against Gurpatwant Singh Pannun, and the August 2024 shooting of Satinder Pal Singh Raju in Woodland, California, which is unsolved and which he calls politically motivated.

HAF and CoHNA argued that the wording was vague and could institutionalise bias against Hindus and Indian Americans. On 13 October 2025 Newsom vetoed the bill, writing that the Office of Emergency Services had already created a Transnational Repression Awareness class with federal partners and that the issue is best addressed through administrative action in coordination with federal agencies. HAF's Samir Kalra called the veto a victory for the civil rights of all Californians. The Sikh Coalition said it was profoundly disappointed and would keep working on the issue.

What followed: on 23 April 2026 the Sikh Coalition reported that the Office of Emergency Services had built a one-day training for state and local police, in pilot, to be certified by the state's Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training. It includes a module that names India as a perpetrator of transnational repression. A wider rollout was expected in summer 2026, with priority for agencies in areas with large Sikh populations. The Coalition said community groups had no role in shaping it.

Where: Sacramento, and California, home to about 250,000 Sikhs.

Why it mattered: The bill split Sikh and Hindu American groups over how the United States should treat claims that India targets Sikh activists. It passed both houses without a single No vote, yet the governor stopped it, as he had vetoed the caste discrimination bill SB 403 on 7 October 2023. Bains drew the same comparison in her statement on the veto, as the Bakersfield Californian reported.