California lawmakers just voted to let the state officially count Jews as an ethnic group, not just a religious one, on every government form that asks about ancestry.
Quick Take
- Senate Bill 1387 would add a voluntary “Jewish” ethnicity box to California state demographic forms, from college applications to public assistance paperwork.
- The bill passed both legislative chambers and now heads to Governor Gavin Newsom for a signature.
- Supporters say the change fixes a decades-old data gap that undercounts hate crimes and health disparities affecting Jews.
- Some Jewish advocacy groups oppose the bill, citing privacy fears rooted in the Holocaust and questioning whether Jewishness fits an ethnicity box at all.
What SB 1387 Actually Requires
The bill forces any California state agency that collects ancestry or ethnic-origin data to add a separate, standalone category for Jewish identity. It stays fully optional. Nobody has to check the box, and no one loses benefits or access for skipping it. The measure simply gives Jewish residents a checkbox that has never existed before on official state paperwork.
State Senator Henry Stern, a Democrat from Sherman Oaks, wrote the bill. The advocacy group Jewish California sponsored it. Lawmakers gave final approval on a bipartisan vote, making California the first state in the country to define Jewish identity as both a religion and an ethnicity in law. The bill now sits on the governor’s desk.
Backers frame this as a technical fix, not a philosophical statement. Government forms already ask about race and ancestry. This bill just adds one more honest option to a list that currently forces Jewish residents to guess which box fits them.
Why Advocates Say the Box Matters
Right now, federal and most state forms count Jews as white by default, unless someone picks a different race entirely. There is no way to mark “ethnically Jewish” on most government paperwork, even though Ashkenazi, Sephardic, and Mizrahi Jews trace distinct ancestral lines going back centuries.
Jewish California, the bill’s sponsor, argues that missing data hides real problems. Hate crime statistics, healthcare disparities, and community needs assessments all depend on accurate counts. Without a Jewish category, researchers lump that data into vague “other” fields or lose it entirely, making it harder to spot patterns tied to antisemitism or genetic health risks.
The Pushback From Inside the Jewish Community
Not every Jewish group supports the bill. Jewish Voice for Peace’s Bay Area chapter called treating one religion as an ethnicity “legally inconsistent and factually wrong.” The group argued that scientific polling, like surveys run by the Pew Research Center, already does this counting job better than a government checkbox ever could.
The Sacramento chapter of the same organization went further, warning the bill amounts to a “wrong-headed oversimplification of identity” that could “exacerbate antisemitism” rather than fight it. That chapter also pointed to history, saying past attempts to separate Jewish identity from other categories led to outcomes it called catastrophic.
Privacy fears run through much of the opposition. One critic told lawmakers directly, “When it comes to government holding lists of Jews, we do not trust your privacy guardrails,” a line that echoes the memory of Nazi Germany’s own demographic recordkeeping before the Holocaust. That fear deserves real weight, even as it remains a minority view among Jewish organizations backing the bill.
A Bigger Question About Government and Identity
Federal data guidance has long treated self-identification as the gold standard for collecting race and ethnicity information, so long as respondents never face pressure to answer at all. That standard cuts in favor of SB 1387’s voluntary design. A government that lets citizens define their own identity, rather than assigning it for them, fits squarely with conservative instincts about individual liberty and limited state overreach.
The real debate isn’t whether California can add a checkbox. It’s whether any government box can capture something as layered as Jewish identity, which blends faith, ancestry, culture, and history in ways a single form field will always flatten. That tension isn’t new, and California’s experiment won’t be the last state to wrestle with it.
California Legislature Passes Bill to Become First US State to Recognize Jewish Identity as an Ethnicity …Follow https://t.co/0De8FiNYuN for more. https://t.co/X0oyZlGSDe #IsraelStrong #NeverForget #JewishVoices #WeRemember #EndAntisemitism #StandWithIsrael #IsraelUnderAttack… pic.twitter.com/p2FVgc1Zzd
— JEWISHLIVESMATTER (@JewishLives1) September 2, 2026
Governor Newsom has not yet signed the bill, but its lopsided legislative support suggests he will. If he does, California becomes the first test case for whether other states follow, or whether the internal Jewish debate over this checkbox spreads well beyond Sacramento.
Sources:
feedpress.me, nytimes.com, jweekly.com, jta.org, calmatters.digitaldemocracy.org, israelhayom.com, religionnews.com
