SB 509 Veto: When Bad-Faith Opposition Trumps Civil Rights
"HAF’s deep bad-faith opposition to any serious effort to address transnational repression runs well beyond SB 509."
Harman Singh
October 14, 2025 | 4 min. read | Opinion
This week, a failure of moral courage played out in Sacramento, California, when Governor Gavin Newsom vetoed SB 509.
This simple and bipartisan bill was designed to equip California’s law enforcement with training on the growing threat of transnational repression (TNR). It passed the California Assembly and Senate with no votes of opposition, and was backed by a wide and diverse coalition of Sikh, Hindu, Muslim, Kashmiri, Asian American, immigrant rights, and law enforcement organizations.
This coalition was not window dressing, but an earnest collaboration between different groups: Sikh and Hindu Americans attended legislator meetings together, an Iranian American (with his own personal connection to TNR) penned an op-ed in support, and Japanese American groups were among those signing letters of support in solidarity. And of course, our sangat came out in full force.
Thousands of Sikh Californians, a bipartisan group of California Sikh elected officials, and more than 50 California Gurdwarae all supported the bill. Each time the legislature heard public testimony, we filled the State Capitol’s hearing rooms to raise our voices together.
SB 509’s defeat, therefore, is not a reflection of the bill’s merit or a failure of community mobilization. Instead, it is the direct result of a deeply dishonest and cynical campaign waged by a small but vocal minority led by the Hindu American Foundation (HAF). For months, the process of advancing this crucial civil rights bill was poisoned by lies, hate, conspiracy, and innuendo. Behavior utterly unbecoming of any organization that claims to stand on the side of justice.
HAF’s deep bad-faith opposition to any serious effort to address transnational repression runs well beyond SB 509.
In an April 2025 podcast episode, HAF’s Managing Director for Policy and Programs (and eventual lead opposing witness to SB 509), Samir Kalra, featured Dr. Michael Rubin of the American Enterprise Institute. During the discussion, Dr. Rubin shockingly compared all Sikhs to “the mafia” and argued that India ultimately possesses the right to extrajudicially kill individuals it deems to be terrorists - even if those individuals are on United States soil. Hearing these assertions, Mr. Kalra’s ultimate reply was simply, “absolutely.”
While HAF has refused to respond to our organization’s repeated attempts to seek clarity on these hateful comments, they have doubled down on their minimization and deflection of the TNR issue at large.
On social media, they have referred to the very real FBI, and DOJ, confirmed threats faced by Sikhs as mere “sob stories.” When pressed on the issue of justifying extrajudicial killings, they dismissed the comments as “tongue-in-cheek.” This refusal to condemn rhetoric that justifies violence against a religious community should disturb all elected officials and organizations that work with HAF.
Even after the veto, HAF can’t help themselves from adding insult to injury, referring to TNR as “so-called transnational repression.”
HAF didn’t just work to undermine SB 509 with their opposition to TNR in general -they of course also opposed the bill itself. On the surface, HAF cited several objections that were factually inaccurate.
For example, they claimed that a TNR course for law enforcement already existed (Fact: CalOES confirmed it did not).
They said that the bill would restrict free speech (Fact: The bill text explicitly stated it “shall not prohibit the exercise of rights under the First Amendment”).
And they wailed that the bill would “train law enforcement to falsely slur Americans as ‘AGENTS’ or ‘proxies’ of India” (Fact: The bill made no mention of any country, ethnicity, or religion - and it is in fact HAF who has been documented attempting to push their own political views on law enforcement.)
Beyond their legislative dishonesty, HAF launched blanket attacks against anyone who dared to support the bill. Their Executive Director, Suhag Shukla, tweeted that “if you think SB509 should be law”- a group presumably including 99 California legislators who voted for it - ”it’s because you want to harass people.”
The organization’s primary X account extended similarly baseless, conspiratorial rhetoric to state civil servants, bizarrely alleging “backroom deals” with the Governor’s Office of Emergency Services.
And HAF also circulated disinformation to legislative offices, accusing several Sikh organizations of being “antisemitic” and “Hinduphobic” simply for supporting SB 509 and speaking up against Islamophobia and on other unrelated issues.
Of course, HAF operates within a wider ecosystem of opposition, which has been well documented by interfaith and South Asian groups like the Savera Coalition.
For instance, Hindu American PAC, one of the groups opposing SB 509, made a now-deleted social media post implying that Assemblymember Dr. Jasmeet Kaur Bains - a sitting legislator, author of last year’s version of SB 509, and co-sponsor of this year’s - was sympathetic to terrorism simply because of her authorship. This prompted a rebuke from California’s AAPI Legislative Caucus. Interestingly, four of Hindu American PAC’s six current board members appear to also be board members and/or co-founders of HAF.
This unified front of misinformation has even attempted to redefine the threat, with HAF writing in their 2025 policy priorities that federal and state legislation addressing transnational repression is being “weaponized” against Hindu American organizations. This fantastical claim lacks any evidence and is undermined by the fact that other Hindu American groups supported the bill. (Then again, HAF also has a tendency to cast doubt on the authenticity of other groups’ Hindu identity, so long as they have different opinions.)
The time for euphemisms is over.
TNR is not a political football or an imaginary issue. It is a genuine and pressing problem of foreign governments targeting individuals and violence originating with the Government of India - confirmed by the FBI, the State Department, the United States Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), and leaders from both political parties in Washington, DC.
It makes one wonder why an organization would build an entire policy platform focused on obstructing training about transnational repression.
Whose interests does such rigorous advocacy actually benefit?
Governor Newsom’s veto of SB 509 is a victory for bad-faith actors willing to sacrifice honesty, decency, and the safety of American communities on the altar of political obstruction. We must demand greater integrity from organizations that seek to influence policy in the name of civil rights and ensure that legislative processes are never again hijacked by campaigns of fear, hatred, and misinformation. But if those organizations can’t or won’t find such integrity within themselves, we have to at least demand that our elected officials and law enforcement agencies do not reward their duplicitous behavior.
Harman Singh is the Executive Director of the Sikh Coalition, the largest Sikh civil rights organization in the United States.
Baaz is home to opinions, ideas, and original reporting for the Sikh and Punjabi diaspora. Support us by subscribing. Find us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, and TikTok at @BaazNewsOrg. If you would like to submit a written piece for consideration please email us at editor@baaznews.org.