“We had hopes that because of her Indian heritage, she might be more sensitive to the religious discrimination faced by Sikhs. Far from it. [Harris] was uncaring and dragged out the [Oberoi] case…”
Jaskaran Sandhu
July 26, 2024 | 6 min. read | Original Reporting
As President Joe Biden steps aside from his 2024 re-election bid and endorses Vice President Kamala Harris as the Democratic nominee for President instead, there is a renewed focus on her past as the Attorney General of California—in particular, her role during the Trilochan Singh Oberoi matter.
Oberoi, a Sikh and former Indian Navy officer, moved to America in 1999 and applied for a California Correctional Officer (CO) job with the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR) in 2005.
In 2006, he passed the written CO test. He was given a conditional offer of employment contingent upon passing a vision test, physical abilities test, background investigation, psychological evaluation, and a pre-employment medical examination.
He completed all these components except for the pre-employment medical examination, as it would require a respirator fit test, which needed him to be clean-shaven. Oberoi stated he could not shave his beard due to his religious beliefs as a practicing Sikh. CDCR deemed Oberoi ineligible for the CO position, a decision which he would appeal to California’s State Personnel Board in 2007.
In 2008, he won the appeal on well-established accommodation law principles, which found that the CDCR had discriminated against him on the basis of religion. Harmeet Dhillon of then Dhillon & Smith LLP and Harsimran Kaur, a Staff Attorney with the Sikh Coalition, a nonpartisan advocacy organization for the Sikh American diaspora, represented Oberoi during the appeal.
However, as the discriminatory policy remained, Oberoi would have to pursue further litigation. In 2011, Kamala Harris, the then-Attorney General, represented the CDCR, arguing that he should shave his beard to work there.
Civil rights groups criticized Harris for this stance, noting that the military accommodated beards and that medical exemptions existed. Ultimately, the state settled, compensating Oberoi and giving him a managerial position but not changing the beard ban policy.
“Under the settlement, the state will not change its rules requiring most men to be free of facial hair so they can be fitted for gas masks. But it is paying Trilochan Oberoi $295,000 in damages and giving him a $61,000-a-year job as a manager in the corrections department,” CBS News reported at the time.
The Sikh Coalition recalls being disappointed with Harris’s stand on the issue.
“We adamantly disagree with the maximalist position that [Kamala Harris] and CDCR argued, and we find it reflective of the systemic nature of workplace discrimination that too often affects Sikhs even today,” Harman Singh, Executive Director for the Sikh Coalition, shared with Baaz.
Their memory of the accommodation battle has led them to remind Americans of Harris’s role as she grew in prominence throughout her political career.
“When then-Senator Harris secured the Democratic Party’s nomination for Vice President in 2020, we recognized that we had to [ask] the appropriate questions about her civil rights record like we would about any candidate – including her supporting efforts to thwart the religious rights of Trilochan Singh Oberoi,” Singh said.
In 2020, the Sikh Coalition stated it would “ensure that Sikh civil rights are protected, regardless of who is in the White House. We hope that Harris will champion civil rights for all, including Sikhs, whether she remains in the Senate or becomes a part of the next administration.”
Oberoi’s lawyer during that stretch, Harmeet Dhillon, now of the Dhillon Law Group, spoke to Baaz and remembered the legal ordeal as critical “for the whole community because these trailblazers with courage make it easier for those who follow to fully participate in society without having to go through years of litigation and struggle to obtain equal access.”
Dhillon, who is also a prominent Republican Party member, remains very critical of Harris’s role in the matter. She shares that Harris did not have to push back the way she did during the deliberations and had the power to deal with this issue much differently.
“We had hopes that because of her Indian heritage, she might be more sensitive to the religious discrimination faced by Sikhs. Far from it. She was uncaring and dragged out the case as far as she could, filing every motion and making every argument, even frivolous ones.”
“More galling, the prison department allowed African American men to have beards if they had a medical condition,” Dhillon goes on to add, “but refused the same accommodation to Sikhs with a religious requirement. This was indefensible, and she should have shown leadership, integrity and compassion for the civil rights of Sikhs, a sizeable minority population in our state who have been here for over a century.
Dhillon disagrees when asked if criticisms of Harris, who some argue was just fulfilling obligations as the Attorney General, are unfair.
“[T]he Attorney General doesn’t get to say she was just doing her job. She sets policy. She had the choice early on to do the right thing in this case, and she didn’t.”
She continues to add that Harris “catered to the demands of the bureaucrats and correctional unions and ignored the law. Her scorched earth litigation forced our client to have to make ends meet while working at a Walmart for minimum wage instead of having the correctional officer job he was qualified for.”
Dhillon shares that it took a monumental effort, requiring the time and resources of many others, to secure Oberoi’s victory.
“Only after I assembled a national, broad coalition of civil rights groups to put pressure on Harris, and only after the US DOJ, Civil Rights division opened an investigation into the state for its misconduct, did her office relent and settle the case that never should have had to have been filed at all.”
She adds that this context is essential when considering the kind of leader Harris may be as President.
“[Harris] only does what is right under pressure and not by instinct or according to what is just,” she states while listing off other instances of Harris being criticized for decisions made during her time as Attorney General, including how she “defied federal court mandates to alleviate prison overcrowding, Brady violations in her office as DA, and simply looking the other way when it came to systematic violations of the law.”
The Sikh Coalition flags that it is noteworthy how “echoes of [the Oberoi] case persist today.”
“On the one hand, we are proud that our work catalyzed efforts to successfully pass California AB 1964, the strongest state workplace discrimination law in the country, in 2012. On the other hand, 12 years later, we still see challenges with CDCR and its accommodation of beards in the workplace; the DOJ just recently had to seek a preliminary injunction in support of CDCR officers’ religious rights related to casework the Sikh Coalition has been engaged in for more than two years. Clearly, CDCR has become no less stubborn about and no more inclusive of religious accommodations in more than a decade since,” Singh said.
When it comes to how Sikhs should view Kamala Harris, especially if she secures the Democratic nomination, in light of her past role arguing in favor of Anti-Sikh discrimination, it depends, Singh explains.
“[E]very Sikh—and every voter of any community—must judge her civil rights record holistically: what she did, fought for, and opposed as a prosecutor, an Attorney General, a Senator, and as Vice President. They then must weigh that against their judgment of the civil rights record and rhetoric of her opponent, former President Donald Trump.”
Given that the community is not a “monolith,” the Sikh Coalition believes that “different individuals will reach different conclusions.”
Dhillon, however, is more stern in her criticism of Harris.
“Kamala Harris has never shown any interest in the rights or needs of the Sikh community, and I would not expect her to start now, having gotten so far in her career with her numerous abuses of civil rights of multiple opposing parties for decades.”
Jaskaran Sandhu hails from Brampton, Canada, and is the co-founder of Baaz. He is a lawyer and a public affairs consultant. Jaskaran also previously served as Executive Director for the World Sikh Organization of Canada and as a Senior Advisor to Brampton’s Office of the Mayor. You can find Jaskaran on Twitter at @JaskaranSandhu_
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