California civil rights director says no perfect home for agency, defends move to housing amid staffing limits

Director Kevin Kish of the California Civil Rights Department told Subcommittee 4 of the Senate Budget and Fiscal Review Committee that the agency’s responsibilities extend across employment, housing, contracting and hate-violence response, and that no single state agency is a perfect administrative home for the department.

Kish said the department receives “thousands of complaints of civil rights disputes” each year and that “we have a statutory obligation to investigate every single one of them that is jurisdictional under the laws that we enforce.” He told senators the department prosecutes selected cases in court and operates programs such as the California Pay Data Collection Program and the California versus Hate resource line and network.

Kish defended the governor’s proposed reorganization that would place the civil rights department within a housing and homelessness agency, saying housing complaints represent about 30% of complaints filed with CRD but account for roughly half…