Registration Full, Waitlist Available

Posted on October 17, 2007 
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We’ve reached our registration capacity for the symposium, but we’re still taking waitlist registrations that will allow you to attend if space opens up. Individuals on the waitlist will be accommodated on a space-available basis by checking in with our registration table at the Faculty Center on the day of the symposium.

Due to last-minute cancellations and no-shows, we won’t know about space availability until that day. Please note that registrations accommodated through the waitlist may not receive lunch and space at certain sessions may either be full or require that you sit or stand in a designated overflow area.

Register for the waitlist and view our updated schedule.

Black Population Drops 9% in California Says New Report

Posted on October 15, 2007 
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Compelling State Interest will reveal a variety of statistics on the dramatic change in the socio-economic status of African-Americans in California. The presentation will be Oct. 26, 2007 at UCLA in the Economic Opportunity in California symposium.

African-American population in California dropped nine percent from 2000 to 2006, according to Census estimates reported in the presentation “Compelling State Interest: California A Contra-History Without Prop. 209.”

“This is a scale not seen since the Exodus of 1858, when blacks left San Francisco for British Columbia due to the Fugitive Slave Act,” said historian John William Templeton, author of Our Roots Run Deep: the Black Experience in California, Vols. 1-4.

The 2006 estimate from the American Community Survey is 2.26 million African-Americans. The 2000 Census reported 2.476 million, an increase of 11 percent from the 1990 total of 2,198 million.
Most of the larger counties in the state report declines. The report will be presented Friday, Oct. 26 at Economic Opportunity in California: the Employment and Social Impact of Prop. 209 at UCLA. For more info, call 415-240-3537.

County declines were: Ventura 11.2; Santa Clara 16.8; Santa Barbara 27.0; San Mateo 21.3; San Francisco 24.5; San Diego 20.4; Orange 7.6; Monterey 27.3; Los Angeles 10.5; Fresno 6.4; Contra Costa 3.4; Alameda 18.1 percent.

Gainers were San Joaquin 13.4, San Bernardino 6.8 and Sacramento 0.6 percent.
The Exodus of 1858 involved the migration of 700 of the 5,000 blacks in the state to British Columbia to move away from discriminatory legislation such as the right of testimony law and the Fugitive Slave Act.
Templeton has previously observed a trend in California away from average rates of growth for self-employment in the past four years as author of the State of Black Business reports.

This report, part of a day of presentations on the impact of the anti-affirmative action initiative, looks at a variety of other demographic attributes. This multi-variate approach will help to distinguish which policy changes played the greatest role in the abrupt shift in population and other trends.

Symposium Schedule Now Available

Posted on October 4, 2007 
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The schedule for the symposium is now online here. And the time of the symposium has been revised to 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m.

Please register if you haven’t done so already. The symposium is free, but we do need you to sign up.

Henderson Center for Social Justice report: Prop. 209 Impact on Women-Owned Businesses

Posted on September 24, 2007 
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The Thelton E. Henderson Center for Social Justice at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law, will tomorrow issue “A Vision Fulfilled? The Impact of Proposition 209 on Equal Opportunity for Women Business Enterprises,” a new report documenting the 11-year impact of Prop. 209 on Women Business Enterprises (WBE) seeking public contracts in the state’s transportation construction industry.

California’s transportation construction industry is the source of over $2 billion in public contracts each year. The California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) is the largest granting agency for transportation construction statewide and has tremendous capacity to increase the wealth and employment opportunities among California’s diverse population.

The Henderson Center examined the impact of Proposition 209 on businesses that were certified by Caltrans as Women Business Enterprises. The results are startling:

The report recommends a number of steps state agencies can take to eliminate race and gender bias in public contracting.

The research began under the direction of Monique W. Morris at the Discrimination Research Center (DRC) and continued when Morris joined HCSJ in March 2007. “A Vision Fulfilled” is the second in a series of reports on the impact of Prop 209. The first report, “Free to Compete,” examined the impact on minority businesses.

Monique Morris will be one of the panelists at “Economic Opportunity in California: The Labor and Employment Impact of Prop. 209,” a symposium on Friday, October 26, 2007, from 8 a.m. to 7:30 p.m. at the UCLA Faculty Center.

Established in 1999, HCSJ fosters creative scholarship that examines the law through a lens of social justice, and works in partnership with communities to provide education to the general public.

For more info: http://www.law.berkeley.edu/centers/csj/.

Oct. 26 Symposium Registration Now Open

Posted on September 12, 2007 
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We’ve opened up the registration for “Economic Opportunity in California: The Labor and Employment Impact of Prop. 209,” a symposium on Friday, October 26, 2007, from 9 a.m. to 7 p.m. (reception to follow) at the UCLA Faculty Center. The symposium will examine and discuss the 10-year impact of Proposition 209 on public employment, contracting and the public sphere.

Attendance is free, but pre-registration is required. Lunch will be provided.

We have held a block of rooms at a discounted rate of $169/night at Hotel Angeleno in Westwood. The hotel provides a shuttle to the UCLA campus every 30 minutes. You can reserve the rooms online or call the reservation line at (310) 476-6411 and ask for the “Impact 209″ group discount. You must book before October 3, 2007, to qualify for the rate.

We also recommend Tiverton House, one of the UCLA on-campus guest houses. It is walking distance from the UCLA Faculty Center. Rooms start at $120/night with parking included. Impact 209 does not have a block of rooms reserved there, but participants can call the reservation desk directly at (310) 794-0151.

UCLA also has a list of nearby hotels at www.cho.ucla.edu/housing/hotels.htm.

Thomas Saenz to Keynote Symposium

Posted on August 22, 2007 
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Thomas A. Saenz, counsel to Los Angeles Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, has been confirmed as the keynote for the Oct. 26 symposium

Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa appointed Saenz as counsel in August 2005. He serves as a member of the mayor’s executive team.

Saenz previously worked for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund, a national organization dedicated to securing and promoting the civil rights of Latinos in the United States. Saenz served as lead counsel in numerous civil rights cases involving such issues as educational equity, employment discrimination,immigrants’ rights, day laborer rights, and voting rights.

He served as MALDEF’s lead counsel in successfully challenging California’s Proposition 187 in court, presenting extensive arguments on numerous occasions in three different cases involving the anti-immigrant initiative.

Saenz graduated summa cum laude from Yale University and received his law degree from Yale Law School. He then served as law clerk for the Honorable Harry L.Hupp of the U.S. District Court for the Central District of California and to the Honorable Stephen Reinhardt of the U.S.Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit.

Save the Date! Oct. 26 Set for Symposium at UCLA

Posted on July 31, 2007 
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The symposium is set for Friday, October 26, 2007, at the UCLA Faculty Center and will be called ‘Economic Opportunity in California: The Labor and Employment Impact of Prop. 209′ and will examine and discuss the 10-year impact of Proposition 209 on public employment, contracting and the public sphere.

To receive updates on this symposium, subscribe to our symposium information listserv at: subscribe-146236@en.groundspring.org

The California Coalition to Analyze the Impact of Proposition 209 and a number of institutions at UCLA will sponsor a symposium to examine and discuss the 10-year impact of Proposition 209 and the concurrent reduction of race- and gender-conscious equal opportunity programs in the public sphere.

Proposition 209, California’s anti-affirmative action initiative, went into effect in 1997. Much of the research on Proposition 209 in the decade since has focused on the impact of the initiative in higher education admissions.

There has been comparatively little research examining the impact of the initiative on public employment and contracting, and even less that looks at the broader secondary socio-economic impacts of the initiative. These issues are becoming increasingly crucial to examine as proponents of Proposition 209 seek to place similar measures on the ballot in a number of other states.

This symposium will merge a discussion of existing scholarship with new research on how the socioeconomic conditions of women, people of color, and California as a whole have been impacted by these changes.

Civil Rights Project at UCLA Releases Key Report on Affirmative Action in Higher Education

Posted on July 25, 2007 
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UCLA’s Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles, one of the nation’s leading research centers on issues of civil rights and racial inequality, on July 23 released a key report examining critical developments in affirmative action in higher education since the Supreme Court’s landmark 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, which upheld affirmative action policies.

The report, “Charting the Future of College Affirmative Action: Legal Victories, Continuing Attacks, and New Research,” which is the first to be released since the Civil Rights Project moved from Harvard University to UCLA earlier this year, provides perspectives by leading national researchers on the meaning of the Grutter v. Bollinger decision and cites the active efforts by conservative legal-action groups to interpret the Grutter decision as a limit on affirmative action rather than a victory and to compel colleges to adopt race-blind admissions policies.

The report also cites the Supreme Court’s June 2007 decision on two school desegregation cases — Parents v. Seattle School District No.1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County — as a major setback for conservative groups that had urged the court to adopt a sweeping race-blind policy that would have undermined the Grutter decision.

“Even with recognition of the use of affirmative action in higher education admission policies from a more conservative court than Grutter, we can expect ongoing controversy,” said the report’s editor Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles and a professor of education at the UCLA Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. “It is unreasonable to expect a deeply divided country to come up with a clear and simple, lasting answer.”

The decision in Grutter, in which the Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School, was the first major definition of the right of colleges to pursue race-conscious admissions policies since the court’s l978 decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.

The report concludes that there have been major conflicts over the meaning of the Grutter decision and the right of colleges and universities to pursue such policies.

“Four years ago, the U.S. Supreme Court powerfully recognized the compelling reasons for universities to educate their students with fellow students who bring into the campus the diversity of experiences and perspectives from all parts of American society,” Orfield said. “The Court concluded that there were major gains from a diverse student body for students of all races and for society and its major institutions. We urge leaders of higher education to resist threats and intimidation and to expand programs to integrate higher education, programs that are more secure now with the recent 2007 decision of the reconstituted Supreme Court.”

The legal and empirical analyses in the report assert that the court’s decision in the Grutter case was a major victory that substantially strengthened and extended the rationale for affirmative action in higher education. In addition, the report notes that the court’s June 2007 decision in Parents v. Seattle School District No.1 and Meredith v. Jefferson County is highly significant, given the insistence by all of the justices that they had not undermined the rationale of the Grutter decision.

The report’s authors, including Orfield and nearly 20 leading scholars from colleges and universities nationwide, indicate that there are a number of issues still not settled by the Supreme Court’s June 2007 decision. Controversy will likely continue around financial aid and special programs that prepare underrepresented minority students for the academic year. Issues such as financial aid decisions, which are important questions of both institutional and public policy, are especially critical to beneficiaries of affirmative action, as well as to all low-income families with hopes of accessing U.S. colleges and universities.

The full text of the report and contact information for the report’s authors can be found at www.civilrightsproject.ucla.edu.

Founded in 1996 by former Harvard professors Gary Orfield and Christopher Edley Jr., the Civil Rights Project/Proyecto Derechos Civiles is co-directed by Orfield and Patricia Gándara, a professor at UCLA’s Graduate School of Education & Information Studies. Its mission is to create a new generation of research in social science and law on the critical issues of civil rights and equal opportunity for racial and ethnic groups in the United States. It has commissioned more than 400 studies, published 13 books and issued numerous reports from authors at universities and research centers across the country. The Supreme Court, in its 2003 Grutter decision, cited the Civil Rights Project’s research.

News coverage: The Chronicle of Higher Education, Inside Higher Ed and Diverse Issues in Higher Education.

A Call for Paper Proposals on the Socioeconomic Impact of Proposition 209

Posted on April 30, 2007 
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Proposition 209, California’s anti-affirmative action initiative, went into effect in 1997.  Much of the research on Proposition 209 in the decade since has focused on the impact of the initiative in higher education admissions.  There has been comparatively little research examining the impact of the initiative on public employment and contracting, and even less that looks at the broader secondary socio-economic impacts of the initiative.  These issues are becoming increasingly crucial to examine as proponents of Proposition 209 seek to place similar measures on the ballot in a number of other states.

In the fall/winter 2007, the California Coalition to Analyze the Impact of Proposition 209 (Impact 209) and a number of institutions at UCLA will sponsor a symposium to examine and discuss the 10-year impact of Proposition 209 and of the concurrent reduction of race- and gender-conscious equal opportunity programs in the public sphere.

This symposium will merge a discussion of existing scholarship with new research on how the socioeconomic conditions of women, people of color, and the State as a whole have been impacted by these changes.

To this end, the symposium sponsors have issued a call for paper proposals (see CFP here).

Abstracts and proposals must be received by June 15, 2007.  They will be reviewed with the assistance of an advisory committee (in formation) of researchers and practitioners.  Authors will be notified of selection by July 17, 2007.

Please include participant name, institutional affiliation, mailing address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail addresses on the cover page.  Abstracts should be no more than 250 words.  Proposals for large, empirical studies should be no more than 5 double-spaced pages and should include a separate 250-word abstract.  Such proposals should describe a) the parameters of the research; b) the data sources to be used; c) an indication of the amount of work already completed and the paper’s expected length; and d) initial conclusions/results, if available.  Electronic submissions are preferred.

We will provide significant honoraria to authors completing large, empirical studies and more modest honoraria to other authors.  Lead authors are expected to be available to participate, with a draft manuscript, in a symposium in Fall 2007 or early 2008 at UCLA.  (October 26-27, 2007 are dates currently being considered.)

See complete CFP here.

Court of Appeal Rules That Federal Law Trumps Proposition 209

Posted on April 27, 2007 
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The Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights announced last week that a California Court of Appeal ruled April 18 that a San Francisco ordinance requiring outreach to minority- and women-owned businesses in City contracting may be mandated by federal equal protection, notwithstanding Proposition 209, the State’s anti-affirmative action initiative.

The decision reverses a key element of a previous trial court ruling, holding that the trial judge failed to consider whether the City is constitutionally required to implement a race- and gender-conscious affirmative action program in light of substantial evidence of discrimination in City contracting. In its decision, the Court of Appeal stated that the trial court “assumed that [Proposition 209] is the last word. It is not. The federal equal protection clause is the last word.”

Civil rights advocates who filed a brief in support of the City applauded the ruling. “The Court of Appeal has made clear that public entities have a constitutional duty to make sure that taxpayer dollars are not funneled into a discriminatory contracting system,” said Oren Sellstrom, Associate Director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and counsel for the Coalition for Economic Equity, a coalition of minority- and women-owned business groups.

“This decision opens the door for cities and counties across the State to maintain or reinstate minority business programs, if that is necessary to break down ‘old boys’ contracting networks,” Sellstrom added. Bingham McCutchen LLP, a private law firm acting on a pro bono basis, also represented the Coalition in the appeal.

As the Assistant Director of the Lawyers’ Committee at the time, Eva Paterson was instrumental in getting the original ordinance passed in 1984. The Lawyers’ Committee, along with the Asian Law Caucus and MALDEF, represented the Coalition for Economic Equity when the ordinance was challenged by the Associated General Contractors in the late 1980s. Now EJS President, Paterson has worked with Sellstrom, a fellow Texan, for many years in defense of race conscious public policy.

Sellstrom cited the massive volume of evidence that the City of San Francisco has collected over the years, documenting ongoing discrimination against minority-owned (MBE) and women-owned (WBE) businesses in the awarding of City contracts.

For example, as the Court of Appeal noted, recent public hearings drew 134 individuals, who testified to such barriers as City inspectors who impose more onerous requirements on them than on non-minority contractors and subject them to more rigorous background-vetting despite extensive qualifications.

MBE/WBE contractors also testified that City staffers would blame MBE and WBE contractors for project delays, knowing they were not actually responsible for them, and would routinely extend non-minority business contracts rather than putting them out for a new bid, thus limiting opportunities for MBE and WBE firms.

Statistics also show significant under-utilization of MBEs and WBEs, compared to their availability. While upholding other aspects of the trial court’s decision, the Court of Appeal remanded the case to the trial court to determine, based on this evidence, whether the federal equal protection clause mandates race-conscious programs to remedy this discrimination.

The Court of Appeal ruling is the second decision this month to dismiss legal challenges based on Proposition 209 to Bay Area programs designed to remedy discrimination in the public context.

On April 6, the Alameda Superior Court threw out a challenge to the Berkeley Unified Schools District’s (BUSD) school assignment plan, finding that BUSD does not violate state law when it considers race as one of many factors in assigning students to schools.

Together, these decisions indicate that courts recognize that when discrimination and segregation are found to occur, federal equal protection laws not only permit, but mandate remedial programs, and that Proposition 209 cannot stand as an obstacle to that remediation.

The cases are Coral Construction, Inc., v. City and County of San Francisco (San Francisco County Superior Court No. 319549) and Schram Construction, Inc., v. County of San Francisco (San Francisco County Superior Court No. 421249.) The Court of Appeal case number is A107803.

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