Hearing to discuss Hastings name change starts tomorrow

The California Assembly has introduced Assembly Bill 1936 to change the name of University of California, Hastings College of the Law which, as amended, states that:

Among the Legislative findings and declarations in that bill are:

(d) The Original Act provided that S.C. Hastings would pay into the State Treasury the sum of $100,000, and that amount is never to be refunded, except as provided in the Original Act.

(e) S.C. Hastings completed the payment of $100,000 specified in the Original Act on May 24, 1878.

(f) The Original Act required the state to appropriate the sum of seven percent per annum upon $100,000 to be paid in two semiannual payments to the Board of Directors of the College.

(g) In each year since 1878, the state has appropriated and paid, in semiannual payments to the Board of Directors of the College, a sum equal to or greater than seven percent per annum upon $100,000.

(h) The College was established in 1878, and has continued to exist ever since without interruption. . . .

(k) In September 2020, the College completed a three-year project to examine founder S.C. Hastings’ involvement in mass killings of Native Americans in California’s Eden and Round valleys before the College’s founding.

(l) The project determined that the founder of the College, S.C. Hastings, perpetrated genocidal acts against Native California Indigenous Peoples, most especially the Yuki Tribe, in the 1850s in the Eden Valley and Round Valley areas in the County of Mendocino.

(m) For a period of four years preceding this act, the College collaborated with the Round Valley Indian Tribes Tribal Council and Yuki Tribal members in pursuit of restorative justice. As one of several restorative justice actions, on November 2, 2021, the Board of Directors of the College unanimously authorized that the name of the College be changed.

(n) In connection with the name change authorization, the Board of Directors of the College determined that changing the name of the College is in the best interests of the continuation of the College in perpetuity, and is an element of the College’s ongoing work to address the needs of the current generation of Yuki Tribal members and the College’s legal community.

(o) An act of the Legislature is needed to change the name of the College.

(p) S.C. Hastings, founder of the Hastings College of the Law, promoted and financed Native American hunting expeditions in the Eden and Round Valleys, funding bounties resulting in the massacre of hundreds of Yuki men, women, and children.

(q) S.C. Hastings enriched himself through the seizure of large parts of these lands and financed the college of the law bearing his namesake with a $100,000 donation.

(r) S.C. Hastings and the state bear significant responsibility for the irreparable harm caused to the Yuki people and the Native American people of the state.

(s) The state has formally apologized to the Native American people of the state for the genocide financed and perpetrated by the state.

(t) S.C. Hastings’s name must be removed from the College to end this injustice and begin the healing process for the crimes of the past.

That Bill “would . . . require the Board of Directors of the college, Round Valley Tribal Council and Yuki Indian Committee to rename the college.”

The state Senate has also introduced SB 1288 which, as amended, also removes Serranus Clinton Hastings’ name from the College, but would enact a different legislatively imposed name: “College of the Law.”

If both Bills pass their respective committees and houses, they will go to a joint committee for reconciliation.

While apologizing for “the genocide financed and perpetrated by the state,” in the same breath, in AB 1936 “[t]he Legislature finds and declares” that S.C. Hastings is personally responsible for the deaths of “hundreds of Yuki men, women, and children;” a finding made in the face of sworn testimony given by Serranus Hastings to the California Legislature in 1860 that he had no prior knowledge of or involvement in any of the acts that the current Legislature now characterizes as “genocide” perpetrated on California’s native people by the state government. At the end of its 1860 investigation, the Legislature took no action against Serranus Hastings or anyone else.

What Serranus Hastings did was use state law as it existed, and his knowledge and skill as a lawyer, former Chief Justice and state Attorney General to draft, circulate and submit a petition to the Governor requesting that he authorize the formation of what was then referred to as a “militia” to protect settlers and their property from the violence perpetrated by Native Americans, in large part because they believed that these same settlers (including Serranus Hastings) were trespassing on and stealing their ancestral land.

However, the European-settler narrative, dating back to the late 13th Century when Pope Alexander VI divided the “New World” between Spain and Portugal and adopted a “convert and civilize” plan for the native people in what came to be called the Americas, then, and still, holds that the current, war-winning government owns the land and holds title to it.

Yet this Legislature also finds that: “S.C. Hastings enriched himself through the seizure of large parts of these [ancestral] lands,” without mentioning that his purchase of the Eden Valley was pursuant to the legislative action of the U.S. Congress and California Legislature after the war with Mexico.

Serranus Hastings also testified under oath, which no one has thus far formally disputed, that he bought his land from the State of California. He was thus entitled under state law to protect it and his other property from theft and damage. Because the U.S. military authorities in the area refused to intercede on the settlers’ behalf, they followed the State’s prescribed procedure for enforcing the law by petitioning the governor to “deputize” local settlers to do so in the name of the State.

Thus, under color of that law, the Eel River Rangers were organized, but came to act in the brutal and horrific ways which are now being attributed to Serranus Hastings. But he took no part in or knew in advance of those wanton acts, which were carried out despite the Governor’s direction to the Rangers that they confine their activities to restraining “those known to have engaged in killing the stock and destroying the property of our citizens.”

Even one of the current historians whose narrative the Legislature is erroneously accepting in its entirety to discredit Serranus Hastings admits: “Hastings, then, was not exceptional in his call for action, only unique in his level of influence supporting such demands at the state level. And in their positive responses to constituents’ demands, governors were not unique, either. The state legislature played a role as well.”

In an effort to sweeten the pot, AB 1936 also offers continued restorative justice to the referenced members of California’s native population by intending “to ensure that the College achieves” those goals, but does not authorize any of the funding necessary to carry out those suggested tasks. But that intent does not have the force of law, because legislators’ statements of intent are not part of what is enacted as law, even if they are the authors of the Bill at issue. See generally, Cal. Build. Ind. Assn v. State Water Res. Cont. Bd., 4 Cal.5th 1032, 1042-43 (2018), citing, Cal. Teachers Assn. v. San Diego Comm. Coll. Dist., 28 Cal.3d 692, 700 (1981).

The state Senate has scheduled a hearing on its SB 1288 for April 6, 2022 and will feature former San Francisco Mayor and California Assembly Speaker Willie Brown and U.S. Congresswoman Jackie Speier (both alumni of Hastings College of the Law) speaking in favor of the Bill. There will also be opposition witnesses, one of which will apparently be me.

Some points in opposition that were raised in my prior Daily Journal articles will be that: (1) the Legislature in 1860 essentially acquitted Serranus Hastings of any culpability for the currently charged wrongdoing; (2) the College’s affiliation with the University of California prevents the Legislature from having the state constitutional authority to change the College’s name; and (3) because the contract that the Legislature entered into with Serranus Hastings in 1878 provides that the College “shall forever be known and designated as the Hastings College of the Law” (Cal. Ed. Code Section 92200), the “contract clauses” in the U.S. and California Constitutions prevent it from impairing that contract by changing the name.

The kind of restorative justice that the College is pursuing is long overdue and should be implemented statewide. It is the Governor’s newly formed Truth and Healing Council whose job it is to provide the State with an overall analysis and decision about how to address “the historical relationship between the State of California and California Native Americans.” Executive Order N-15-19 (June 18, 2019). At this point, the Legislature should leave the decision about changing the College’s name to that body.