Rob Bonta

Robert Andres Bonta (born September 22, 1972) is an American attorney and politician serving as the California State Assemblyman for the 18th district since 2012. A member of the Democratic Party, his district covers the central East Bay region of the San Francisco Bay Area and includes the cities of Oakland, Alameda and San Leandro. Bonta was previously a member of the Alameda City Council from 2010 to 2012.

Upon his election to the California State Assembly where he chairs the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, he became the first Filipino-American to enter the California State Legislature.

On March 24, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he would be appointing Bonta as Attorney General of California to succeed Xavier Becerra, who resigned the position to become Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden.Upon being sworn in, he will become the first Asian-American man to occupy the position of California Attorney General.

Robert Andres Bonta was born on September 22, 1972 in Quezon City, Philippines. The next day, Philippines President Ferdinand Marcos declared martial law. Bonta immigrated with his family to California at just two months old. Through his father, Bonta was a U.S. citizen at birth.

The Bonta family initially lived in a trailer at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, the United Farm Workers headquarters near Keene, California, before moving north to Fair Oaks, a suburb of Sacramento. At Bella Vista High School, Bonta was a soccer player and graduated as class valedictorian.

Bonta then attended Yale University in New Haven, Connecticut, where he graduated cum laude with a B.A. in history in 1993 and played on the Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team. After completing his undergraduate studies, Bonta attended University of Oxford for one year studying politics, philosophy, and economics. In 1995, Bonta enrolled at Yale Law School and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1998.

After his year at Oxford, Bonta returned to New Haven to attend Yale Law School while concurrently working as site coordinator at nonprofit organization Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), where he developed policy and managed activities for 30 staff members and 100 children for an organization serving the Church Street South neighborhood. Bonta was admitted to the California State Bar in 1999.

From 1998 to 1999, Bonta clerked for Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut. Bonta then returned to California to be a litigation associate with San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest. Working at Keker & Van Nest from 1999 to 2003, Bonta practiced in a variety of areas including civil rights, crime, insurance, patent infringement, legal malpractice, contract, and fraud.As a private attorney, Bonta was part of a team that worked with the ACLU to implement new protocols to prevent racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol.

From 2003 to 2012, Bonta was a Deputy City Attorney of San Francisco under Dennis Herrera. During his tenure, Bonta represented the City of San Francisco in a lawsuit filed by Kelly Medora, a pre-school teacher who accused a San Francisco Police Department officer of using excessive force during a jaywalking arrest. Bonta, as the assigned attorney by the City Attorney's Office, argued for the city that Medora and her friends put themselves and others in danger by walking on the street and were warned to leave by Damonte and another officer. The city eventually settled the lawsuit for $235,000 in May 2008. In 2009, Bonta testified on behalf of the city in defense of San Francisco's strip search policy in jails by arguing that concerns about smuggling of drugs and weapons at a main city jail presented reasonable basis for strip searches. The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 6–5 in favor of the strip search policy in February 2010.

Alameda City Council

Bonta was elected to Alameda City Council in November 2010. Within a year, he declared his intent to run for state assembly. In 2012, some Alameda residents started a recall campaign against him but the effort never qualified for the ballot, with Bonta winning election to the state assembly in November 2012.

California State Assembly

Elected to the State Assembly in 2012, Bonta has authored major changes to California's penal code as well as immigration, health care and housing law.

Bonta introduced legislation in January 2013 that would require California public schools, as funding is available, to teach students "the role of immigrants, including Filipino Americans" in the farm labor movement. It was signed into law in October of that same year by Jerry Brown. Bonta's mother, Cynthia Bonta, helped organize Filipino and Mexican American farmworkers for the United Farm Workers.

Bonta authored legislation in 2016 to outlaw "balanced billing" by hospitals in order to help consumers avoid surprise medical bills. Brown signed the bill in September 2016.

Bonta introduced legislation to repeal a McCarthy-era ban on Communist Party members holding government jobs in California. The bill received criticism from Republicans, veteran groups and Vietnamese Americans, with Republican Assemblyman Travis Allen calling it"blatantly offensive to all Californians." After passing the State Assembly, the legislation was later withdrawn.

Bonta and State Senator Robert Hertzberg co-authored to Senate Bill 10 that made California the first state in the nation to eliminate money bail for suspects awaiting trial and replace it with a risk-assessment system. On August 28, 2018, Governor Jerry Brown signed the sweeping reform bill into law.

Bonta introduced legislation to end the use of for-profit, private prisons and detention facilities in California. Signed in 2019 by Gavin Newson, AB 32 made California the first state in the nation to ban both private prisons and civil detention centers.

Bonta introduced Assembly Bill 1481 in 2019, which sought to outlaw baseless evictions and mandate landlords demonstrate "just cause" in order to evict residential tenants. The bill was combined with a statewide cap on rent increases and other rentalproposals into a single piece of legislation. That bill, Assembly Bill 1482 , was passed by the California Legislature and signed by Newsom in October 2019.

Bonta joined Assemblymember Kevin McCarty and other colleagues in 2019 as a lead author of Assembly Bill 1506, a bill to mandate an independent review ofofficer involved shootings in California by the California Department of Justice. The bill was signed into law in September 2020 by Newsom.

Following the killing of George Floyd and a July 2020 incident in Central Park involving a white woman calling 9-1-1 to report a black man who asked her to obey park rules, Bonta introduced legislation that would criminalize knowingly making a false call to the police based on someone’s race, religion, or gender.

Attorney General of California

On March 24, 2021, Governor Gavin Newsom announced that he would be nominating Bonta as Attorney General of California to succeed Xavier Becerra, who resigned the position to become U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services under President Joe Biden.

2014 California State Assembly

2016 California State Assembly

2018 California State Assembly

2020 California State Assembly