The Michigan Court of Appeals heard arguments on Tuesday about whether the petition circulated by the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative was deficient because, as BAMN claimed (successfully in one lower court, not in another), that it misled voters by not making clear it “would alter and abrogate the equal protections provision of the Michigan Constitution.”
In the spirit of we report/you decide, let’s look at the record. Here is the current anti-discrimination provision of the Michigan Constitution:
So, “any means” includes lying? Shocking.
John, the question in your last paragraph is brilliant and deserves to be asked more frequently. And it needs to be made clear that the question isn’t whether preferences for underrepresented religious groups are desirable, but whether they are constitutionally possible. That is, not “Should we do this?” but “Could we do this legally if we wanted to?” Then note that the language as to race is identical. I really do think that’s unanswerable.
Thanks, Michelle. I always thought that was a good question. I’ve never understood why religious preferences would not be allowed by the same arguments that justify racial preference.
The only reason I can think of is that the scope of the free exercise clause may be broader than the equal protection clause.
That could be true, although I’m not sure what sort of argument or evidence would support it. But then there’s also the problem of the Establishment Clause, which has traditionally been thought to prevent the state from, among other things, favoring one religion over another. If it were determined, say, that the Univ of California has too many Jews and Protestants and not enough Muslims or Catholics and preferences were thus given to the latter, it would be hard to say that those preferences weren’t, well, preferences.
The odd thing is that I’d think that religious diversity would be at least as useful educationally as racial diversity. Using race as a proxy for viewpoint is surely less efficient than selecting for viewpoints directly, if a variety of viewpoints is what you want, and religious convictions are certainly viewpoints.
And there are better proxies, too — regional diversity, country of birth, party affiliation . . . in fact, one of the good things about the top X% approach is that it enforces regional diversity simply and effectively, rather than filling the universities with a “rainbow” of students who all grew up in the identical suburban environment. I’m not saying that approach doesn’t have its problems — the chief two, as far as I’m concerned, being that it it gives lousy high schools little incentive to improve, and bright kids in them little incentive to prepare themselves adequately for college-level work — but if what you really want is to fill universities with real cross-section of a state’s society, you could do a lot worse.
But I don’t think there is anyone who honestly thinks that diversity of outlook is the primary point of AA.