California Hindus Alarmed as California's SB 509 Advances In Assembly after Shutting Out All Community Inputs

Despite earnest engagement with bill authors the Hindu community's concerns have been ignored

SACRAMENTO, Calif., June 17, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- The Coalition of Hindus of North America (CoHNA) and the Hindu American Foundation (HAF) are alarmed by the swift advancement of California Senate Bill 509 (SB 509), a dangerous piece of legislation that, under the guise of addressing "transnational repression," threatens the safety and civil liberties of minority communities especially Hindus and Indian Americans. In collaboration with the Hindu American Foundation (HAF), CoHNA had earlier submitted a series of amendments, reflecting the community's concerns. All have been rejected. Now, the Bill is being rushed through the Assembly after it passed the Senate vote without any effort to address community concerns.

The amendments proposed by the CoHNA and HAF were straight-forward, common-sense measures aimed at safeguarding civil rights. However, these have been ignored by the Bill's authors—Senators Anna Caballero and Assembly Members Jasmeet Bains and Esmeralda Soria. Instead, the lawmakers have doubled down on legislation that could unjustly label peaceful advocacy efforts as foreign interference, placing innocent Hindu Californians at risk of undue scrutiny and profiling.

These actions are particularly troubling in light of the rising risk to Hindu temples—at least four of which have been vandalized in California in just these past 16 months, all under the cover of anti-India "activism". California lawmakers have failed to address this wave of transnational terror targeting Hindu temples—and constituents and the broader rise in anti-Hindu hate documented by California's own hate hotline. Instead they have focused on legislation like SB509 that privileges certain communities over others via vague and dangerously broad language around what constitutes "transnational repression" and, more importantly, who gets to define it and train on it.

"The Hindu community approached this legislative process in good faith, believing lawmakers would prefer to make a law respectful of the diversity of California's communities," said CoHNA board member Sudha Jagannathan who previously testified before the Senate Committee. "It is deeply troubling to see our concerns repeatedly dismissed."

Jagannathan's concerns were echoed by Samir Kalra, managing director of HAF and a Civil Rights Attorney, who reiterated that, "SB 509 lacks the adequate guardrails necessary to prevent trainings on transnational repression from being politicized."

"More dangerously, under the guise of protecting 'dissent,' SB 509 would empower law enforcement to criminally prosecute diaspora groups and community organizations who merely speak out against terrorism and extremism, by accusing them of being foreign 'agents' or engaging in 'transnational repression' on behalf of a foreign country," Kalra added.

The Bill seeks to empower California's Office of Emergency Services (Cal OES) to train law enforcement on "patterns of behavior" related to transnational repression. Cal OES' core mission is to respond to natural and man-made disasters such as forest fires, earthquakes, and pandemics. It has neither the constitutional mandate nor the professional expertise to deal with matters that are firmly in the federal domains of foreign policy and national security. Such overreach will only lead to biased profiling and chilling of legitimate free speech, especially when advocacy by diasporic communities is mischaracterized as foreign interference. It also opens up the very real possibility wherein extremist groups, who engage in politically-motivated violence against Hindu Americans or other diaspora communities, are protected under the label of 'dissidents'.

CoHNA, in continued collaboration with HAF, will host community webinars and campaigns to inform and mobilize the community. Together, these efforts aim to raise awareness of SB 509's true implications and urge Assembly Members and Governor Gavin Newsom to reject this deeply flawed bill.

CoHNA strongly encourages community members to take up this matter with their Assembly Members, raise their concerns, register their opposition, and highlight the need to protect the constitutional rights and civil liberties of all Californians.

About CoHNA

CoHNA is a grassroots level advocacy and civil rights organization dedicated to improving the understanding of Hinduism in North America by working on matters related to the Hindu community and by educating the public about Hindu heritage and tradition. For more information, please visit https://cohna.org or follow us on X (formerly Twitter), Facebook, LinkedIn and Instagram.

SOURCE Coalition of Hindus of North America