Gov. Gavin Newsom signed legislation on Thursday changing a California holiday named after Cesar Chavez to “Farmworkers Day,” a swift rebuke of Mr. Chavez after he was accused of sexually abusing women and girls while leading the movement for farmworker rights.
Lawmakers rushed to pass the bill this week with bipartisan votes before Mr. Chavez’s birthday on March 31, which California has celebrated as a paid holiday for the last 25 years. Mr. Newsom signed the bill privately in his office with no fanfare.
The reckoning has been swift ever since The New York Times published an investigation eight days ago revealing that Mr. Chavez had groomed and sexually abused two girls and raped Dolores Huerta, his ally in leading the United Farm Workers union.
Efforts are underway to remove Mr. Chavez’s name from streets, schools and community events throughout California and the Southwest, where many residents have regarded him as a civil rights hero who championed dignity and respect for Latinos.
In Colorado, lawmakers are moving legislation to rename that state’s Cesar Chavez holiday as “Farm Workers Day.” In Arizona, lawmakers are advancing a bill to repeal the holiday after Gov. Katie Hobbs said last week that the state would no longer recognize it.
In Texas, where Cesar Chavez Day has been an optional holiday, many public employees and schoolchildren have had the day off for years. But last week, Gov. Greg Abbott directed state agencies not to observe it this year, and the governor and Mexican American lawmakers have pledged to undo the holiday altogether when the legislature reconvenes in January.
No state has celebrated Mr. Chavez as much as California, where leaders in 2000 became the first to make March 31 a paid holiday.
Several Democratic lawmakers in California said this week that it had been painful to absorb the revelations about Mr. Chavez after long looking up to him. Renaming the holiday, they said, would recognize the people who drove the movement, rather than the man.
Activism by Mr. Chavez and Ms. Huerta helped put the fight for better wages and conditions on the Democratic agenda, forging an alliance between the union and the party that has endured for decades. Ms. Huerta told The Times that she had been raped by Mr. Chavez decades ago as they built the farmworker movement.
“As the daughter of farmworkers, this isn’t just a headline for me,” Esmeralda Soria, a Democratic assemblywoman from Fresno, said as she introduced the bill to change the name of the state holiday. “This is personal.”
Republican lawmakers, who have not typically been aligned with farmworker unions, did not express sadness over Mr. Chavez’s reckoning. Still, some shared personal stories as they supported the renaming of the holiday.
Suzette Martinez Valladares, a Republican state senator, said her grandparents had picked grapes, peaches and cotton in California’s Central Valley, toiling in the heat without sufficient water or rest breaks. They slept in tents, she said, until her great-grandfather saved enough money to buy a piece of property.
“Behind every field in California, there’s a family story like mine,” Ms. Valladares said.
Several local governments in California have already erased Mr. Chavez’s name from the holiday. In Los Angeles, Mayor Karen Bass signed a proclamation last week renaming it “Farm Workers Day.” In Sacramento, the county Board of Supervisors voted on Tuesday to call it “Sacramento County Farm Workers Appreciation Day” this year.
Local officials have also begun changing community landmarks. Blocks from the State Capitol in Sacramento, a statute of Mr. Chavez was cloaked in black plastic in Cesar Chavez Plaza as city officials considered a new name for the square. In Fresno, in the heart of California’s farm belt, the City Council last week decided to erase Mr. Chavez’s name from a prominent boulevard.
In San Jose, where Mr. Chavez lived in the 1950s, city workers applied a layer of concrete over an etching of his name in a stone staircase. The school board in Los Angeles voted this week to rename two campuses that honored Mr. Chavez by the start of the new school year in the fall.
Lauren McGaughy contributed reporting from Texas.
Laurel Rosenhall is a Sacramento-based reporter covering California politics and government for The Times.
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