Don’t let Claudine Gay destroy California Civil Rights Initiative

The Claudine Gay scandal, culminating in the Harvard president’s resignation, shows that the intersection of DEI and academic corruption produces assorted social ills. And yet California legislators would use the work of “experts” like Gay to resurrect racial preferences against the desires of their own constituents.

Even in deep-blue California, voters don’t want the government to play racial favorites. Indeed, in 1996 Golden State voters set a standard for the nation when they approved Proposition 209, otherwise known as the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI), a state constitutional amendment banning racial preferences in employment and education. Even after years of leftward drift, the state’s electorate reaffirmed that ban by a large margin in 2020.

Although Californians have repeatedly voiced their opposition to racial preferences — which the Supreme Court last year found to be unconstitutional with respect to college admissions — state legislators are attempting an end run around both the people and the courts. Proposed Assembly Constitutional Amendment (ACA) 7 seeks to circumvent the CCRI by allowing the state to fund “research-based, or research-informed, and culturally specific programs” based on race and other protected categories. In other words, if the governor determines that a particular racial preference will improve educational outcomes, the state officials can ignore the citizens’ will.

How dangerous is ACA7? For one thing, it would balkanize — as a matter of law —Californians into competing racial tribes. For another, as University of San Diego law professor Gail Heriot, who’s also on the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, has explained, ACA7 gives the governor unlimited power to nullify the CCRI.