A federal appeals court upheld California’s ban on using race in admissions at state colleges and universities.
“I’m pleased, but not surprised,” Ward Connerly, sponsor of Proposition 209, told The Los Angeles Times. “The country is clearly going to have to move in the direction of treating everybody fairly.
Proposition 209 was a 1996 ballot initiative passed by California voters to prevent race, ethnicity and gender from being considered when making college admission decisions.
According to reports, the year after the ban was adopted, the number of Black, Latino and Native American students at UCLA and Cal-Berkeley dropped by 50 percent.
Since then, affirmative action supporters have been fighting the law. Despite the ruling by the Ninth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, they vowed to continue to fight to make sure affirmative action returns to the state.
“If the Ninth Circuit will not open up the universities, the students will open them up by their own actions,” Matt Williams, an organizer for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN), told The Journal of Blacks in Higher Education. “BAMN will continue the fight to ensure that Latina/o and Black students have access to the University of California in the courts and in the streets.”
George B. Washington, the Detroit attorney representing the group seeking to get the ban overturned, told the Associated Press that he is planning to ask a full appellate court to review the case.
However, that appeal may be unnecessary, as the U.S. Supreme Court is expected to rule whether a state university can consider race in admissions later this year.
There are similar bans in Washington State, Arizona and Nebraska. A Michigan ban was overturned last year, but an appellate court will reconsider that case. Voters in Oklahoma will decide on a similar law in the fall.