Abstract: The California Racial Justice Act (RJA), which applies to all pretrial, trial, and post-conviction defendants, prohibits any state actor from relying upon racial bias to seek or obtain a conviction or sentence against a defendant. In a state where racial disparities in incarceration have been growing for decades, the law, which became retroactive in 2024, has the power to create a sea of change across California criminal institutions. Using the power of state consti