News

Media coverage on people, organizations and issues related to Prop. 209.

S.F. can try to reinstate affirmative action program, court rules
San Francisco Chronicle
April 19, 2007

A state appeals court has given San Francisco a chance to reinstate an affirmative action program for minority and female contractors, saying a history of discrimination may justify preferential treatment despite California’s Proposition 209. A judge who struck down the 20-year-old program in 2004 failed to review San Francisco’s claims that long-standing and pervasive discrimination by both city employees and contractors resulted in firms owned by minorities and women being illegally excluded from winning city business, the First District Court of Appeal ruled Wednesday.

Editorial: California import that our state doesn’t need; Ward Connerly is targeting eight states for his anti-affirmative action crusade this year. For Colorado, it would be a step in the wrong direction.
The Denver Post
April 25, 2007

Just when Coloradans thought we might have to think for ourselves for a change, Ward Connerly jetted into town this week to promote his California-style ban on affirmative action. Colorado is one of eight states targeted by Connerly for anti-affirmative action initiatives on the November 2008 ballot. He led the fight to pass a 1996 California initiative that barred preferential treatment on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in public employment, education and contracting. Clones of that California ban later passed in Washington state and in Michigan.

UCLA sees an increase in black student admissions
Los Angeles Times
April 6, 2007

The Affirmative Action Ban, Ten Years Later
(link will launch streaming audio)
KPCC, The Patt Morrison Show
March 20, 2007

Patt Morrison travels to UCLA to discuss the impact of California’s anti-affirmative action initiative, Proposition 209, ten years after its passage. Proposition 209 amended the state constitution to ban public institutions from using race or ethnicity in admissions or hiring. We focus in particular on how that has affected minority admissions in state universities.