Governor Gavin Newsom of California has signed legislation creating a state agency dedicated to processing reparations claims for descendants of slaves, the most substantial reparations program at the state level in America.

The new law, signed Friday, establishes the Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery within the California Department of Justice. The bureau will be responsible for verifying eligibility, processing claims, and recommending appropriate forms of reparations.

“This law reflects a critical acknowledgment of the historic injustices that have shaped the Black experience in California and across this country,” the chairman of the California Legislative Black Caucus, Weber Pierson, said in a statement. “For generations, Black Americans have faced exclusion, exploitation, and systemic barriers to opportunity. With SB 518, we lay the foundation for a future built on truth, equity, and repair.”

In addition to creating the new bureau, the law provides funds for state universities to develop a genealogy-based eligibility system, creates a claims process for land taken from black families, and reserves 10 percent of state-supported home ownership opportunities for descendants of enslaved people of African ancestry.

The governor allocated $12 million to the reparations-related initiatives, drawing criticism from Republican lawmakers amid budget challenges in the state, which faces a $12 billion deficit in the current fiscal year. The Republican leader in the State Assembly, James Gallagher, argued that current residents shouldn’t bear financial responsibility for historical wrongs.

“Slavery was a stain on our nation’s history, but I don’t believe it’s fair to try to right the wrongs of the past at the expense of the people today who did nothing wrong,” Mr. Gallagher said in a statement. “More than a quarter of Californians are immigrants. How can we look at those people, who are struggling as it is, and say it’s on them to make up for something that happened more than 150 years ago?”

The legislation represents the culmination of years of advocacy that began when California became the first state to establish a reparations task force in 2020, following nationwide protests over George Floyd’s murder. The task force spent more than two years studying slavery’s legacy in California before releasing comprehensive recommendations.

In September 2024, Mr. Newsom issued a formal apology for California’s role in slavery. While designated before Emancipation as a “free state,” slave owners were permitted to temporarily  bring their slaves to the state, where they worked in mines during the 1850s gold rush and in agriculture.

“The State of California accepts responsibility for the role we played in promoting, facilitating, and permitting the institution of slavery, as well as its enduring legacy of persistent racial disparities,” the governor said.

“Building on decades of work, California is now taking another important step forward in recognizing the grave injustices of the past – and making amends for the harms caused.”

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Correction: The 1850s was the period of California’s gold rush. An earlier version misstated the decade.