The Pacific Legal Foundation, which represented the winning parties in the Seattle school assignment case discussed immediately below, has just won another big case in San Francisco where a state trial court ruled that the city’s public contracting program giving overt preferences to minorities and women violated the state constitution, as amended by Prop. 209.
The latest version of the law that was struck down provided for an automatic 10% reduction of the bids submitted by female or minority firms and required contractors to hire a certain percentage of women or minority subcontractors.
In his ruling yesterday, Superior Court Judge James Warren ruled that the
[California] Supreme Court found that (Prop. 209) prohibited all discriminatory and preferential treatment on the basis of race. It did not permit race-conscious government action even when labeled “affirmative action.”
He rejected the city’s argument that Prop. 209 includes an exception for cities that are trying to remedy past intentional discrimination….
“The intent of the voters in adopting Prop. 209 was to outlaw race- and sex-based programs irrespective of the goodwill and moral position behind any particular program,” Warren wrote.
He also dismissed the city’s argument that striking down the ordinance would violate the equal protection clause of the U.S. Constitution, saying that other courts have found Prop. 209 constitutionally sound.
I continue to find it mind-boggling that preferentialists can argue, with an apparently straight face, that forbidding the state to distribute benefits or burdens based on race violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Come on, John. Surely you can see that “equal protection” means that some groups are to be treated preferentially over others? I mean, it’s only plain english. How much clearer can it be?
It’s strange, you know. Given the obvious benefits to the left of being able to use the didactic and fallacious reasoning that wouldn’t pass Intro Logic, I was very surprised to read about liberal efforts to have a huge number of people read ‘1984’. Are they really that ignorant, or is it just an even more blatant ‘in your face’ gesture?