Dear friends,
We have much to celebrate this Independence Day. From the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act to the 1st anniversary of the monumental Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court decisions. We at CEO are overjoyed at the continued wins we are notching for colorblind equal opportunity in America. Many of them, however, are not as flashy as the passage of major civil rights legislation or a Supreme Court win but can be just as important. And, for 30 years now, CEO has been a major contributor to the fight to stop identitarian division anywhere we find it. In case you missed them, below are two more wins that make this week’s fireworks even brighter.
California Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (ACA-7)
CEO initially notified you of this initiative in January of this year when we wrote a letter to to all 40 California lawmakers in Senate leadership to oppose ACA-7. You can find the CEO post and letter on our website at THIS LINK.
In our view, ACA-7, which purported to create a mechanism under which the governor of California could declare “exceptions” to Prop 209, would swallow that rule which has banned race preferences in California since our 1996 fight to implement it. Pursuant to the ACA-7 proposal, so long as there is some “research” allegedly finding that an exception would be beneficial, the governor can disregard the California constitution’s quarter-century ban on race discrimination. As CEO well knows, one can find “research” to support just about anything. Thus, voters would be asked via ACA-7 to essentially pre-approve exceptions to Prop 209 without knowing what those exceptions would be. Our position was that this scenario would be a recipe for unrestricted race discrimination in the country’s most populous state.
We are pleased to report the ACA-7 initiative has FAILED. The deadline passed last week for the state Senate to permit inclusion of the measure on the November ballot. Through the dogged efforts of many, led by our friend Professor Gail Heriot, equal opportunity for all has scored another major victory.
American Privacy Rights Act of 2024 (APRA)
In May, keen observers noticed something unusual in a bill introduced in the Senate seemingly unrelated to civil rights or equal opportunity. The bill, referred to by the acronym APRA, contained a “disparate impact” provision to purportedly reduce “algorithmic harm.” Unfortunately, as many CEO supporters will recognize, disparate impact liability is fraught with countless problems and enormous harms, principal among them, the creation of stealth quotas based on characteristics such as race and gender. Pursuant to the bill, race and gender quotas would need to be established to prevent a breathtakingly broad definition of algorithmic harm that would apply to practically every sphere of American life. Our friend Stewart Baker wrote about the consequences in The Volokh Conspiracy at THIS LINK.
Equal opportunity advocates, including CEO, sprang into action to sever these provisions. We are elated to say that the disparate impact provisions of APRA have been stricken. Once again, Stewart Baker reports at The Volokh Conspiracy about this “complete victory for those who objected to the smuggling of race and gender preferences” into a bill unrelated to civil rights.
While both developments are exciting and give us more to celebrate this 4th, it’s not over. Stealth quotas like those proposed in APRA can be re-introduced in the next Congress; just as ACA-7 can be revived.
And, of course, any number of new measures can and will be tried by those who oppose colorblind equal opportunity. Just as CEO continues to monitor college admissions via our After Affirmative Action Network, we must and will remain diligent in monitoring these other efforts as well. As always, we thank you for your support as we do so.
