I have fought for equal rights and against discrimination throughout my career.  I have also been an uncompromising champion of a woman’s right to choose.  I will continue to do so if I am elected Governor.
 
As Governor, I:

• Had the most diverse administration of any governor in the country.  

• I named women to nearly one-third of the state’s posts; including 131 Judges, 5 cabinet members, 2 department directors and 10 deputy directors.

• I appointed hundreds of Latinos to high-level government positions, including:  Mario Obledo as Secretary of Health and Welfare – the first Latino in a modern-day California cabinet; and Cruz Reynoso as the first Latino ever to serve as an Associate Justice of the California Supreme Court.

• I appointed more than 200 women and minority judges, including the first African American and Latino to the California Supreme Court.  I also appointed 5 gay and lesbian judges to the courts, including the first openly gay and lesbian judges appointed in California’s history. Nearly twenty years lapsed before the appointment of another openly gay judge to the bench by then-Gov. Davis in 2001.

• Required equal pay for women for jobs requiring equal skill, effort and responsibility.

• Established the nation’s first anti-redlining measure, prohibiting discrimination by lenders based on geographic location or ethnic makeup of a neighborhood.

• Signed landmark legislation decriminalizing consensual sex between adults of the same gender, previously a felony, in 1975.

• Successfully opposed the “Briggs Initiative”, which would have required local school boards to dismiss gay and lesbian teachers whose sexuality was “likely to come to the attention of school children and/or other employees.”

• Continued state funding for abortions for low-income women after passage of the Hyde Amendment in 1976, which cut off federal funding for abortions.

• Signed the “Pregnancy Freedom of Choice Act” giving unmarried women under the age of 21 the opportunity for state-funded prenatal care and counseling.   I also signed a bill to require county health clinics to provide physicians and surgeons with lists of family planning and birth control clinics.

• Was as an early supporter of ending workplace discrimination against gay and lesbian workers. Rather than wait for the Legislature to act, I issued an Executive Order to immediately prohibit discrimination against gay and lesbian workers in state government in 1979. Legislation similar to what I proposed as Governor did not become law until 1999.

• Recognized the civil rights of individuals with disabilities and removed barriers.

• Provided vote by mail option for people with disabilities who could not access their designated polling place.

• Mandated that telephones designed for people with hearing impairments cost the same as standard phone.

As Attorney General, I:

• Successfully argued in the California Supreme Court in support of a lesbian who was refused treatment by her doctor because of her sexual orientation. The Court ultimately agreed, holding that a physician’s private religious beliefs do not exempt him or her from anti-discrimination laws.

• Following the California Supreme Court’s finding of a state constitutional right to same-sex marriage, I refused to defend Proposition 8 in court and, instead, argued for overturning the measure. I also argued that same-sex marriages performed following the California Supreme Court’s finding of a constitutional right to same-sex marriages, and prior to the adoption of Proposition 8, should not be invalidated if the court upheld Proposition 8.  The Court ultimately upheld Proposition 8 while providing that those wed prior to its passage remained married. I have since filed a brief arguing that Proposition 8 should be overturned on the basis of federal law in Perry v. Schwarzenegger, a case pending in the U.S. District Court.

• Joined a lawsuit against the Federal Government to stop the Bush Administration from adopting a “midnight regulation” that jeopardized a woman’s right to contraception, even emergency contraception given to rape victims.