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In California Courtrooms, Fair Trials for Police Officers May Soon Be Protected Again

Although anti-police sentiment has existed in parts of American culture for decades, it surged into the mainstream after the death of George Floyd in 2020. Police stations were torched. Businesses were looted. And many cities responded not by backing law enforcement—but by turning against them.

California was no exception. Politicians rushed to align themselves with the Black Lives Matter movement, and “defund the police” became a policy position in city halls across the state. One law passed in 2020 quietly stripped law enforcement officers of something every citizen should be guaranteed: the right to a fair trial.

The right to an impartial judge and jury isn’t just an American tradition—it’s a foundational principle written directly into the United States Constitution. It’s also acknowledged globally in documents like the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the Geneva Convention. Those international agreements don’t govern how American courts work, but they reflect something almost everyone agrees on: no one should be judged by someone who’s already decided they’re guilty.

But in California, that protection was quietly taken away from one group—law enforcement officers.

In 2020, state lawmakers passed changes that redefined how peremptory challenges work in jury selection. Traditionally, attorneys could dismiss prospective jurors without having to explain why—unless the reason was based on race, sex, or another protected category.

But under the new law, jurors who say they distrust police, believe racial profiling is common, or have a history of negative views about law enforcement are treated as presumptively valid. In other words, an attorney must prove they’re not being discriminatory just to remove someone who may have already decided all officers are bad.

That includes people who’ve publicly posted slogans like “ACAB” — an acronym for All Cops Are Bastards. Even that level of hostility is protected under current California law.

Most law enforcement officers go their entire careers without a single complaint—less than one percent ever face formal allegations. According to national data, the vast majority of police calls involve domestic violence, theft, assaults, traffic accidents, and welfare checks. In rural areas, officers are often the only emergency responders for miles.

But since 2020, officers and their families have lived with a new kind of fear: that even inside the courtroom, their badge might be the reason they don’t get a fair shot.

Now, Senate Bill 758, authored by Senator Tom Umberg, offers a fix. It restores the right of attorneys to dismiss openly anti-police jurors in trials involving law enforcement—without the added requirement to prove the challenge isn’t discriminatory. The bill does not change existing protections against discrimination based on race, sex, or other categories. It simply brings jury selection in these cases back in line with the standards used in other types of trials.

The California Peace Officers’ Association (CPOA) supports the bill, calling it a necessary correction to an uneven system.

“When an officer’s conduct or credibility is at the heart of a case, a juror’s past negative experiences or skepticism toward law enforcement becomes a valid concern for ensuring an unbiased jury,” said CPOA President Chief Neil Cervenka. “By removing the extra hurdle to justify these challenges, the bill empowers attorneys to assemble juries capable of delivering fair and accurate outcomes without compromising anti-discrimination safeguards.”

For the families of law enforcement officers, the worry is already constant—wondering if the person they love will come home at the end of the shift. Most are working families living on less than $100,000 a year, raising kids in areas where the cost of living keeps rising. They don’t live in the spotlight, and they carry a weight that doesn’t go away when the uniform comes off.

What Senate Bill 758 does is simple: it ensures that one bad call, made in a life-or-death moment with only seconds to decide, won’t be judged by a jury stacked with people who already decided they don’t trust the badge.

And for those families, that might be the one thing that helps them sleep at night.

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