PING! 
Your One Stop Resource For All The California Recall News!
Want on our daily or major news ping lists? Freepmail DoctorZin.
Posted on 08/25/2003 12:26:45 AM PDT by Alia
Commentary and news from Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) The PLF Sentry Vol. 3, No. 15 August 22, 2003
DAVIS SIGNS ASSAULT ON PROPOSITION 209; PLF POISED TO POUNCE
Proposition 209 is the voter-passed amendment to the California Constitution which forbids state and local governments from playing favorites by race in public hiring, contracting and education. The latest in a long line of assaults on Prop. 209 by proponents of racial spoils is Assemblyman Mervyn Dymally's bill that would play inventive word games with key mandates in the initiative. The Dymally legislation, A.B. 703, would require that the words "discriminate" and "preference" be interpreted not by the clear definitions that the California Supreme Court has used when applying Prop. 209 to strike down programs of racial favoritism, but instead by reference to squishy concepts in the International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination. Government discrimination by race would be permitted when it is supposedly necessary to "secur[e] adequate advancement of certain racial or ethnic groups." Quotas, set-asides, and other forms of official bias that were intended to be banned by Prop. 209 would now be allowed back in, through A.B. 703's semantic sleight of hand.
Gov. Gray Davis has just signed this attack on equal rights. PLF is preparing to fight back with a lawsuit challenging the legislation as an impermissible attempt to use a mere statute to gut a provision of the state constitution. PLF's client in this litigation will be Ward Connerly, the Sacramento businessman who chaired the Prop. 209 campaign drive and who has made elimination of official race-based bias his nationwide mission.
Read a PLF op-ed on the attack on Prop. 209: http://www.cppf.us/OnlineOriginals/Columns/082103HJ.html
Read Ward Connerly's statement on A.B. 703: http://www.acrc1.org/ab703.htm
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.