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From the racial makeup of University of California classrooms to the number of minority contractors working on BART projects, California's 17-year ban on affirmative action programs has indelibly marked the nation's largest state. But now the debate over whether that experiment has caused more harm than good will take a back seat to a larger national question: Are laws such as California's affirmative-action ban, Proposition 209, unconstitutional, and should be overturned? On Tuesday, the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in a challenge to Michigan's Proposal 2, a 2006 voter-approved law that mirrored Proposition 209 by barring the use of...

Back in the day, if students wanted easy credits, they signed up for underwater basket-weaving. Now they just need a political cause. The University of California, Berkeley is offering students college credit to work for an expressly political organization fighting for affirmative action and immigrant rights. This semester, the African Studies department at Berkeley is offering a two-credit class called “Fighting to Learn, Learning to Fight: Building the Movement for Public Education and Equality.” The class is sponsored by BAMN — The Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrants Rights And Fight for Equality By Any Means Necessary —...

SAN FRANCISCO — California's high court on Monday upheld the state's 14-year-old law barring preferential treatment of women and minorities in public school admissions, government hiring and contracting. In a 6-1 ruling, the state Supreme Court rejected arguments from the city of San Francisco and Attorney General Jerry Brown that the law, known as Proposition 209, violates federal equality protections. Opponents of the ban say it creates barriers for minorities and women that don't exist for other groups, such as veterans seeking preference. The ruling written by Justice Kathryn Werdegar came in response to lawsuits filed by white contractors challenging...

Arizonans will decide next year if they want to outlaw affirmative action programs and any special programs or preferences for women and minorities. the Senate gave final approval to a proposed constitutional amendment to prohibit preferential treatment or discrimination by government on the basis of race, sex or ethnic origin. The measure, which already has been approved by the House, now goes on the 2010 ballot. It will be the first time Arizonans get to vote on the issue. A similar initiative drive in 2008 failed when backers did not get enough signatures. But Californian Ward Connerly, who helped craft...

Ward Connerly, former University of California regent, has an article, "Study, Study, Study — A Bad Career Move" in the June 2, 2009, edition of Minding the Campus that should raise any decent American's level of disgust for what's routinely practiced at most of our universities. Mr. Connerly tells of a conversation he had with a high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that the administrator was developing to increase campus diversity. Connerly asked the administrator why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. His response was that unless the...

Anti-affirmative action advocate Ward Connerly and a Sacramento-based legal foundation today blasted Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and President Barack Obama's administration for a recently-enacted California Department of Transportation policy that awards contracts based on a race- and gender-based quota system. The Pacific Legal Foundation, an individual rights and limited government watchdog group, said that it is filing a lawsuit today against Caltrans on behalf of Associated General Contractors of America to reverse the department's mandate that 6.75 percent of contracts receiving federal money go to women, African Americans, Asian-Pacific Americans and Native Americans. The foundation says that the policy violates federal...

About five years ago, shortly before my term ended as a Regent of the University of California (UC), I was having a casual conversation with a very high-ranking UC administrator about a proposal that he was developing to increase "diversity" at UC in a manner that would comply with the dictates of California's Constitution and the prohibition against race, gender and ethnic preferences. As I listened to his proposal, I asked him why he considered it important to tinker with admissions instead of just letting the chips fall where they may. In an unguarded moment, he told me that unless...

Initiative 424 would amend the Nebraska state constitution to ban state and local governments, along with the University, from showing preferential treatment based on race, sex, national origin and ethnicity. The initiative passed!!!! Yes 389,372 58% No 287,233 42% In Colorado, (Amendment 46) the count is too close to call right now: 50% No--49% Yes with about 70% of the votes tabulated. Ward Connerly chalks up another state (maybe two)!!! There a malcontents in Nebraska who have promised to challenge the law in court. They're current argument are the proceedures used to collect signatures.

PHOENIX (AP) -- With one brief criticism of affirmative action, John McCain has brought new attention to ballot issues aimed at dismantling preferential treatment programs for women and minorities. The question is whether McCain's support for one of those initiatives, in Arizona, will make any difference. . . .McCain's comments also have drawn critics who pointed to comments he made a decade ago calling similar measures "divisive."

Presidential challenger John McCain said Sunday that he supports a proposed ballot initiative in his home state that would prohibit affirmative action policies from state and local governments. A decade ago, he called a similar effort "divisive." The reversal comes as McCain, a conservative senator from Arizona, seeks to tailor his policies and rhetoric to independent-minded voters who will determine the outcome of November election. Both McCain and Democratic rival Barack Obama have accused each other _with good reason _ of "flip-flopping," a charge that carries weight with independents who seek consistency and authenticity in their political leaders. McCain was...

It isn't often that an issue involving a specific state takes center stage during a presidential campaign -- particularly if the matter isn't even officially before the voters yet. But an effort in Arizona to prohibit state and local governments from considering race, ethnicity, color, gender or national origin in matters involving public employment, public education or public contracting was among the topics discussed by both John McCain and Barack Obama on Sunday. The Arizona ballot initiative is the brainchild of Ward Connerly, the former UC regent who was behind a similar proposal in California more than a decade ago....

ABC News' Teddy Davis and Kevin Kilbane Report: During a "This Week" interview with ABC News' George Stephanopoulos John McCain reversed himself on affirmative action and endorsed for the first time a proposed state ballot measure which would end race and gender-based affirmative action in his home state of Arizona. "I support it," McCain declared when asked about the referendum. "I do not believe in quotas... I have not seen the details of some of these proposals. But I’ve always opposed quotas."

WASHINGTON: Barack Obama's political success might claim an unintended victim: affirmative action, a much-debated policy that he supports. Already weakened by several court rulings and state referendums, affirmative action now confronts a challenge to its very reason for existing. If Americans make a black person the leading contender for president, as nationwide polls suggest, how can racial prejudice be so prevalent and potent that it justifies special efforts to place minorities in coveted jobs and schools? "The primary rationale for affirmative action is that America is institutionally racist and institutionally sexist," said Ward Connerly, the leader of state-by-state efforts to...

A California group is running a radio ad that uses Barack Obama’s former minister and Nebraska’s only black state senator to take aim at affirmative action in the state. The ad, which includes a clip of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright saying “God damn America,’’ says Wright and Nebraska Sen. Ernie Chambers believe in race preferences, but most Nebraskans don’t... The American Civil Rights Initiative, which is sponsoring the ad, is pushing measures in several states, including Nebraska, that oppose affirmative action, which the group says gives preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin. The...

Ward Connerly's critics often blame the success of the millionaire businessman's anti-affirmative-action campaign on some dubious political sleight of hand. Now they'd like to make the former UC regent's controversial initiative disappear before it reaches the ballot in five states. Connerly's measure won handily in his home state of California and in Washington and Michigan, affecting race- or gender-based programs in public employment, education and contracting. Connerly spearheaded California's Proposition 209 in 1996, which amended the state constitution to outlaw race and gender-based preferences in state hiring and state university admissions. His twelve-year tenure on the Board of Regents ended...

Come November, voters will decide on more than half a million federal, state and local officeholders and ballot initiatives. Ninety-nine percent of these decisions will matter less than will the five civil rights initiatives that might be on the ballots in Arizona, Colorado, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Missouri. If the initiatives qualify for those states' ballots, all probably will pass. But the initiatives must surmount ferocious opposition from defenders of racial preferences, such as the politicians who administer and benefit from Missouri's racial spoils system. The crux of the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI) would amend that state's constitution to say:...

So, we're going to get honest about race this time? Let's get started then. If only it were that simple. We've had time to digest Sen. Barack Obama's call for a new, and more frank, examination of the "complexities of race in this country that we've never really worked our way through." Plenty of people, including some from opposite sides of the ideological fence, heard something in that speech that spoke to their hearts. But a period of reflection makes clear that, when the power of rhetoric fades, we're conflicted not just about race, but even how to talk about...

Tough, tough crowd. Ward Connerly, the California businessman behind a movement to end race- and gender-based affirmative action in Nebraska, faced jeers and interruptions Tuesday evening as he defended his position on the University of Nebraska-Lincoln campus. About 200 listeners, mostly students, drilled Connerly with questions about his motives, beliefs and even his salary. One young woman asked whether his efforts are funded by the Ku Klux Klan. “No,” Connerly said. Then he added: “What a stupid question,” drawing boos. Connerly leads the California-based Super Tuesday for Equal Rights, which seeks to end racial and gender preferences in hiring and...

A prominent affirmative-action critic is targeting Nebraska as one of five states where he hopes to get voters to decide in November 2008 to end the use of racial, ethnic and gender preferences by public colleges and state and local agencies. Ward Connerly, founder of the American Civil Rights Institute, has begun an effort to put an initiative on the Nov. 4, 2008, ballot in Nebraska that would ban the state from granting preferential treatment to people based on race, gender, color, ethnicity or national origin. The initiative would affect the areas of public employment, public education and public contracting....

The former vice president’s new book is itself an assault on reason. The Assault on Reason, by Al Gore (Penguin Press, 320 pp., $25.95) The most surprising thing about The Assault on Reason, Al Gore’s current bestseller, is that for a little while it actually makes some sense. The first few dozen pages, while hyperpartisan, mainly excoriate a dumbed-down, trivia-and-celebrity-obsessed culture, and in the age of Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan who could disagree? But Al Gore is like one of those guys at a party with whom, once you get a few drinks in him, you never know what’s...