On March 24, California Governor Gavin Newsom announced that Robert Bonta would replace Xavier Becerra as California’s attorney general. Bonta will be the first Filipino American in the role. Bonta served as a deputy city attorney in San Francisco for nine years before being elected in 2012 to represent Oakland, Alameda, and San Leandro in the California legislature.

As a state assemblyman, Bonta pursued various racial, economic, and environmental initiatives, including outlawing for-profit prisons; promoting sentencing overhauls for marijuana-based charges; authoring California’s Green New Deal bill; implementing statewide renter protections; strengthening hate crime laws; promoting stronger ties between communities and law enforcement; protecting immigrant families from deceptive ICE tactics; combating predatory bail laws; and requiring independent investigations of unarmed civilians killed by law enforcement. He also co-authored an unsuccessful constitutional amendment to repeal California’s death penalty.

Prior to entering politics, Bonta clerked for Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the U.S. District Court for the District of Connecticut and worked as a litigation associate for San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest. Bonta’s private practice covered areas of civil rights, insurance, patent infringement, legal malpractice, contracts, fraud, as well as criminal law.

Bonta attended Yale University and graduated cum laude with a degree in history. He studied politics, philosophy, and economics at the University of Oxford for one year, then returned to Yale to pursue his law degree.