By Canadian Press

California Assembly backs repealing affirmative action ban

Jun 10, 2020 | 7:01 PM

SACRAMENTO, Calif. — The California Assembly has backed a plan to let voters decide on overturning affirmative action ban

THIS IS A BREAKING NEWS UPDATE. AP’s earlier story follows below.

California lawmakers were debating Wednesday whether to let voters decide if the state’s public universities and government agencies can consider race in their hiring and admissions decisions.

California has banned affirmative action-type programs since 1996 when 55% of voters agreed to amend the state’s Constitution to ban “preferential treatment” based on race, sex, colour, ethnicity or national origin.

That amendment has withstood multiple legal challenges and legislative attempts to change it. But this year, worldwide protests over racial injustice sparked by the police killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis have given supporters a boost in their quest to bring affirmative action back to California.

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Wednesday, the California Assembly debated a proposal that would repeal that ban if it is eventually approved by voters.. If the state Senate concurs by June 25, the question would be added to the November ballot — further intensifying an election year that already includes a presidential contest.

Assemblywoman Shirley Weber, a Democrat from San Diego who authored the proposal, said what happened to Floyd showed “the symptoms of a much larger problem.”

“I hope that this Legislature would no longer be complicit in the status quo,” she said. “We will not idly sit back and rest with gender and racial inequality.”

The repeal effort faces strong, organized opposition among some in the Asian community. Wenyuan Wu, director of administration for the Asian American Coalition for Education, said Asian American students “have always been labeled as over represented in good schools.”

“We worry that the bill, once the bill is passed, that will give the state universities in California ample reason to use racial balancing to discriminate against us,” she said.

Assemblyman Steven Choi, a Republican from Irvine who was born in South Korea, said he opposed the measure because it would “legalize racism and sexism.”

“I do not want to live in a state where the colour of my skin or my race or my sex or my national origin determines my qualifications for a position, a job or entering to a college,” he said. “I came here to this country to get away from ideologies like that.”

California’s ban of affirmative action was inspired in part by a 1978 U.S. Supreme Court decision that allowed public universities to use race as a factor in their admissions decisions. That case originated from the University of California, Davis School of Medicine.

Since the 1996 amendment, at least seven other states have adopted similar policies: Washington, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Hampshire and Oklahoma. A constitutional amendment in Colorado failed to pass in 2008.

Adam Beam, The Associated Press