Tough Stance Taken on Affirmative Action

SACRAMENTO —  A legislative committee carried the campaign to eliminate affirmative action to a tough new level Wednesday, approving a bill that could slap criminal penalties on state and college officials who ignored such bans.

The bill by Assemblyman Bernie Richter (R-Chico) passed the Assembly Judiciary Committee on a 9 to 4 vote, with all the committee’s Republicans voting in favor.

Ward Connerly, the University of California regent and African American who is a high-profile advocate for ending gender- and racial-based preferences in hiring, college admissions and state contracting, appeared at the hearing as a supporter.

Connerly ticked off several areas in which the practice has been eliminated and said that polls show that “across the board the people of this state are opposed--violently opposed--to racial preferences.” The Legislature, he said, has an obligation to join in the effort to end them.

Other measures seeking elimination of race- and gender-based preferences are in place or proposed on other fronts in California.

Gov. Pete Wilson has issued an executive order halting the practice within his administration. University of California regents have voted to end preferences throughout the UC system.

More sweepingly, a voter initiative measure that has qualified for the November ballot would outlaw affirmative action policies throughout state government by constitutional amendment.

The Richter measure would take the abolition of affirmative action a step further by allowing for civil and criminal penalties against, for example, a state official who used race as a basis for hiring.

The bill (AB 2468) allows for felony criminal penalties that could result in a one-year state prison sentence or a fine. It also provides for alternative misdemeanor sanctions including county jail time.

Among several opponents, Latino policy consultant Arnoldo Torres of Sacramento said the bill was merely following a fad of the moment, caught “in the winds blowing back to the pre-civil rights era.” Allowing minorities the chance to rise to positions of authority is crucial, he said, so that role models are provided for minority children “who look like them” and show they can make it, too.

The bill now heads to the Assembly Appropriations Committee, where it is also expected to pass before reaching the Republican-dominated Assembly floor.

Richter conceded that his bill was probably doomed in the Democratic-controlled state Senate.

But he defended the penalties in his bill. Those sanctions, along with a provision allowing civil lawsuits, “provides for holding bureaucrats personally responsible for those decisions,” Richter said.

He would have preferred, he said, for the Legislature rather than the initiative process to address what he called the unfair advantage given to women and minorities in college admissions and state hiring and contracting.

“There is an opportunity in the legislative process not only to legitimize the decision but to bring people on board by attempting to accommodate their concerns” as lawmakers debate pros and cons, rather than the up or down decision in the voting booth.

Richter said he would nevertheless continue to support the so-called “California civil rights initiative.”

If both his measure and the initiative become law, Capitol analysts said the criminal sanctions called for in the Richter bill would be open to interpretation by the courts.