The California state assembly narrowly approved on May 8th the repealing an anti-communist discriminatory law which had been enacted during the second "Red Scare" (McCarthyist hysteria) of the 1940s and ’50s that banned Communists from holding jobs in government. It should be noted that, apart from Communist Party members, victims of this law were also people of left ideology and supporters of national liberation struggles. Everyone who was considered a supporter of the Left was affected by this law.
That period of McCarthyism led to the dismissal of thousands of workers in government positions, education, and unions. The bill must now pass through the state Senate for approval.
More specifically, the 1953 California law warns of "a clear and present danger, which the Legislature of the State of California finds is great and imminent, that in order to advance the program, policies and objectives of the world communism movement, communist organizations in the State of California and their members will engage in concerted effort to hamper, restrict, interfere with, impede, or nullify the efforts of the State...and their members will infiltrate and seek employment by the State and its public agencies."
According to the Los Angeles Times, the repeal bill was sponsored by the member of the California assembly Rob Bonta (Democratic Party) of Oakland. "It's an old and archaic reference," said Bonta of the specific language about communism. He said his bill was "really just a technical fix to remove that reference to a label that could be misused or abused, and frankly, has been in the past, in some of the darker chapters of our history in this country." According to Bonta "part of having a functioning democracy and a fair and equitable society is to make sure you're actually basing your decisions to take someone's job away ... based on their actual conduct, their actual behavior and actual proof and evidence, not just some loose label that could be applied overbroadly in a way that is unfair and unjust."
