NO on ACA7 Group Protests Assemblywoman Cottie Petrie Norris’s Vote for Race-Based Preferences

Even after badly losing Proposition 16 in 2020, the referendum to bring back racial preferences, the professional class of race hustlers are at it again – this time with a constitutional amendment of their own.

As the Globe reported in January, Proposition 16 would have overturned California’s ban on Affirmative Action – the preferential treatment to persons on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in public employment, public education, and public contracting.

Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 by Assemblyman Corey Jackson (D-Riverside) already passed the Assembly 62-18, and is in the Senate awaiting committee hearings. Jackson also supports reparations.

Here is the Assembly vote – along party lines:

If passed by by the California Senate, ACA 7 will be on ballot as an amendment to the existing constitutional language of Proposition 209, which voters passed in 1996 banning racial preferences in education and hiring… (but it’s not as if the state or higher education actually ever honored Prop. 209…)

As opponents of ACA 7 say, it advocates for race and sex-based preferences, distorting the principle of equal opportunity into an illiberal, social-engineering tool of equal outcome.

Gail Heriot, Chairwoman of the No on ACA 7 campaign and Professor of Law at the University of San Diego told the Globe their Orange County volunteers launched their first protest against ACA 7 Saturday. It was held just outside Assembly Member Cottie Petrie Norris’s District Office protesting her vote in favor of ACA7 in the Assembly.

Here are some of their photos, videos and Tweets:

Cottie Petrie Norris didn’t care about our fundamental rights. We hope that senators like ⁦@SenMikeMcGuire⁩ ⁦@SenBlakespear⁩ ⁦@SenatorUmberg⁩ ⁦@BenAllenCA⁩ ⁦@SenatorAshby⁩ ⁦@SenBillDodd⁩ ⁦@Steve_Glazer⁩ ⁦will care more. #NoACA7 pic.twitter.com/tVBWwcVmwD

— Gail Heriot (@GailHeriot) April 13, 2024

On this cool weekend day in April, I had the pleasure of meeting a few old friends and many new and young faces to begin again a campaign to defend equality under the law, and our children’s’ right to be treated equally regardless of race when applying to California universities. pic.twitter.com/wOmoPlLjWa

— Steve Miller (@SteveMillerOC) April 13, 2024

“ACA-7 is all about asking voters to pre-approve whatever exceptions to Proposition 209 that Governor Newsom or some unknown future governor decides to make,” said Heriot in January. “I am confident that if it makes the ballot and voters understand it, they will reject it. The state Senate should stop it before it gets that far.”

The No on ACA 7 website gives the background:

“No on ACA 7” is a ballot measure committee organized for the purpose of defeating Assembly Constitutional Amendment No. 7, a discriminatory and unconstitutional proposal that would erode and effectively repeal the California Constitution, Article I, section 31 (a). The constitutional provision states the following:

“The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

First codified via the successful passage of Proposition 209, which was approved by 54.55% of California voters in November 1996. In 2020, opponents of Prop. 209 tried to repeal it via Proposition 16, placed on the ballot through the State Legislature. This time, 57.23% of the California electorate, more progressive and diverse than in 1996, voted to keep Prop. 209 in place.

As the Globe reported in September:

In other words discrimination is permissible if an academic somewhere says it is doing good.

ACA 7 says that the “State may use state moneys to fund research-based, or research-informed, and culturally specific programs in any industry, including, but not limited to, public employment, public education, and public contracting, if those programs are established or otherwise implemented by the State for purposes of increasing the life expectancy of, improving educational outcomes for, or lifting out of poverty specific groups based on race, color, ethnicity, national origin, or marginalized genders, sexes, or sexual orientations.”

The discriminatory programs would have to be approved by the governor.

Dr. Allen Shafter wrote in July for the Globe:

It seems clear that if ACA 7 were to be eventually approved by voters, the race preferences lobby will be able to gut Proposition 209 pretty much at will. Put another way, the proponents of ACA 7 are counting on the fog that permeates the scholarly research landscape to give cover to their racial preferences agenda. There is the old saying attributed to Lavrentiy Beria, head of Joseph Stalin’s secret police: “Show me the man, and I’ll show you the crime.” In the case of ACA 7 it’s “Give me your agenda, and I’ll give you a study supporting it”.

Assemblyman Jackson claims, “Since its passing in 1996, Proposition 209 has served as a barrier toward implementing potential programs to assist vulnerable communities who have intentionally been neglected and left behind for over 400 years. This unjust law has substantially limited the state’s ability to address disparities in business contracting, education, housing, wealth, employment, and healthcare, which are deeply embedded in laws, policies, and institutions that perpetuate racial inequalities.”

Ironically perhaps, Prop. 209 is based on the exact language of the 1964 U.S. Civil Right Act. No comment on that from Assemblyman Jackson. Why do Democrats oppose hard-work, initiative, self-discipline and individual merit?