Class Action Lawsuit Filed Against CA Anti-Affirmative Action Measure
A class action lawsuit was filed last week alleges that the civil rights of Black, Latina/o, and Native American applicants to California schools are violated due to an amendment, Proposition 209, to the state constitution. The Proposition 209 amendment to the California constitution passed in 1996 and prohibits affirmative action in public employment, education, and contracting. The so-called California Civil Rights Initiative effectively ended affirmative action policies in the state and gutted sex discrimination law.The suit, which claims that Proposition 209 is unconstitutional because it violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution was filed by Michigan-based group By Any Means Necessary. Lead counsel Shanta Driver told the Associated Press, "Thirteen years of a ban on affirmative action in the state of California has left, in particular UCLA and Berkeley, with just pitiably low numbers of black and Latino students...You can't have a white majority create a situation in which the only people who are barred from going to their regents and saying, 'Adjust the admissions system so more of our sons and daughters can get in' are black, Latino and Native American."
California Attorney General Jerry Brown wrote a letter (see PDF) to the California state Supreme Court last
