Rob Bonta

Robert Andres Bonta (born September 22, 1972) is an American lawyer and politician serving as the attorney general of California since 2021.

Robert Andres Bonta was born on September 22, 1972, in Quezon City, Philippines.

Bonta immigrated with his family to California at just two months old.

Through his father, Warren Bonta, Bonta was a U.S. citizen at birth.

The Bonta family initially lived in a trailer at Nuestra Señora Reina de la Paz, the United Farm Workers headquarters near Keene, California, before moving north to Fair Oaks, a suburb of Sacramento.

At Bella Vista High School, Bonta was a soccer player and graduated as class valedictorian.

Bonta then attended Yale University, where he graduated cum laude with a B.A. in history in 1993 and played on the Yale Bulldogs men's soccer team.

After completing his undergraduate studies, Bonta attended the University of Oxford for one year studying politics, philosophy, and economics.

In 1995, Bonta enrolled at Yale Law School and graduated with a Juris Doctor in 1998.

After his year at Oxford, Bonta returned to New Haven to attend Yale Law School while concurrently working as site coordinator at nonprofit organization Leadership, Education, and Athletics in Partnership (LEAP), where he developed policy and managed activities for 30 staff members and 100 children for an organization serving the Church Street South neighborhood.

From 1998 to 1999, Bonta clerked for Judge Alvin W. Thompson of the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut.

Bonta then returned to California to be a litigation associate with San Francisco law firm Keker & Van Nest.

Bonta was admitted to the California State Bar in 1999.

Working at Keker & Van Nest from 1999 to 2003, Bonta practiced in a variety of areas including civil rights, crime, insurance, patent infringement, legal malpractice, contract, and fraud.

As a private attorney, Bonta was part of a team that worked with the ACLU to implement new protocols to prevent racial profiling by the California Highway Patrol.

From 2003 to 2012, Bonta was a Deputy City Attorney of San Francisco under Dennis Herrera.

During his tenure, Bonta represented the City of San Francisco in a lawsuit filed by Kelly Medora, a pre-school teacher who accused a San Francisco Police Department officer of using excessive force during a jaywalking arrest.

Bonta, as the assigned attorney by the City Attorney's Office, argued for the city that Medora and her friends put themselves and others in danger by walking on the street and were warned to leave by Damonte and another officer.

The city eventually settled the lawsuit for $235,000 in May 2008.

In 2009, Bonta argued on behalf of San Francisco, defending its strip search policy in jails by asserting that concerns about smuggling of drugs and weapons at a main city jail presented reasonable basis for strip searches.

The United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit ruled 6–5 in favor of the strip search policy in February 2010.

Bonta was elected to Alameda City Council in November 2010.

He was sworn in on December 21, 2010, and appointed vice mayor the same day.

Within a year, he declared his intent to run for state assembly.

A member of the Democratic Party, he previously served as a member of the California State Assembly for the 18th district from 2012 to 2021 and as a member of the Alameda City Council from 2010 to 2012.

The first Filipino-American to serve in the California State Legislature, Bonta chaired the California Asian & Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus.

After Xavier Becerra resigned as attorney general to become Secretary of Health and Human Services, Bonta was appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom to replace him.

Bonta was sworn in on April 23, 2021, becoming the first Filipino-American to hold the office.

Bonta was elected to a full four-year term in office in 2022.

In 2012, some Alameda residents started a recall campaign against him but the effort never qualified for the ballot, with Bonta winning election to the state assembly in November 2012.

The final city council meeting during which he was a member of the city council was on November 20, 2012.

Bonta was elected to represent the 18th district in the California State Assembly in the 2012 election.

He was reelected in the 2014, 2016, 2018, and 2020 elections.

In February 2021, CalMatters reported that Bonta had regularly solicited donations, also known as "behested payments", from companies with business before California's legislature for his wife's nonprofit organization.

As a member of the state assembly, Bonta authored major changes to California's penal code, as well as immigration, health care, and housing law.

Bonta authored legislation in 2016 to outlaw balance billing by hospitals in order to help consumers avoid surprise medical bills.

Brown signed the bill into law September 2016.

Bonta introduced Assembly Bill 1481 in 2019, which sought to outlaw baseless evictions and mandate landlords demonstrate "just cause" in order to evict residential tenants.

The bill was combined with a statewide cap on rent increases and other rental proposals into a single piece of legislation.

That bill, Assembly Bill 1482, was passed by the California Legislature and signed by Newsom in October 2019.