Angered by the recent U.S. Supreme Court decision upholding the use of affirmative action in university admissions, Ward Connerly and other conservative activists plan to sponsor ballot initiatives in other states akin to California's 1996 measure banning racial and ethnic preferences.
Connerly, a University of California regent, is set to launch the effort today by announcing a statewide initiative campaign at the University of Michigan, whose admissions policies were the subject of the recent court rulings. The ballot measure would seek to outlaw the use of race, ethnicity or gender in admissions, hiring or contracting in public institutions there.
"We have to prove to the court, the president and the Congress that the Supreme Court's decision was an aberration," Connerly said. "It was not consistent with where this country is or where it ought to be. And we're going to do that by taking it back to the people."
The court ruled last month that colleges may consider a minority student's race as one of many factors in weighing an application, but that they may not use quotas or other point scales. In response, Connerly and other affirmative action opponents are refining their approaches to combating racial preferences.
Affirmative action opponents said that the Michigan initiative, as yet unnamed, would be modeled after California's Proposition 209 and a similar measure approved by voters in Washington state in 1998. The California proposition bars "preferential treatment on the basis of race," thus the court's decision has no direct effect on California's public colleges or universities.
Connerly, a Sacramento businessman and leading advocate of Proposition 209, said he and his supporters will decide in the next few weeks where to launch other initiative drives. He said they hope, in addition to Michigan, to have three or four such measures on state or local ballots by November 2004 for a sort of "Super Tuesday" of public sentiment on the issue of racial and ethnic preferences.
Targets of their efforts could include Colorado, Arizona, Missouri and certain cities or counties in Florida and Texas, according to Connerly and others at his American Civil Rights Coalition, an anti-affirmative action group, and its political allies.
For instance, Edward Blum, a senior fellow at the Sterling, Va.-based Center for Equal Opportunity, said that he expected Connerly to take the lead in the various campaigns but that groups like Blum's would "lend a hand."
