Rob Bonta, a Democrat, is the 34th Attorney General of California, appointed by Governor Gavin Newsom and confirmed by the legislature in April 2021 to fill the seat vacated by Xavier Becerra. He won a full four-year term in November 2022. Born in Quezon City, Philippines, and raised in California from infancy, he is the first Filipino American to serve in the California Legislature and as state Attorney General. He holds a B.A. in history from Yale, studied at Oxford, and earned his J.D. from Yale Law School. Before becoming AG, he clerked for a federal judge, worked as a litigation associate and then Deputy City Attorney of San Francisco, served on the Alameda City Council, and represented the 18th Assembly District from 2012 to 2021.
As Attorney General, Bonta has established an Office of Gun Violence Prevention, launched a Housing Justice Team focused on housing access and affordability, pursued environmental litigation against oil and gas companies over the climate crisis, and reported filing 54 lawsuits against the second Trump administration in its first year in office.
His tenure has drawn some scrutiny: in 2022, his office’s concealed-carry-permit dashboard inadvertently exposed the personal data of more than 240,000 permit holders and applicants for nearly 24 hours before being taken offline. In 2025, the state’s Fair Political Practices Commission cleared him of a complaint alleging his re-election campaign improperly spent roughly $468,000 on a private law firm connected to a federal corruption case. He has also faced a lawsuit from an advocacy group challenging the official ballot title and summary he wrote for a transgender-rights-related ballot initiative, which the group characterized as biased.
