Analysis of the
11/30/00 California Supreme Court's affirmation of Proposotion 209 and race-blind justice
in the state. |
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Analysis of the
11/30/00 California Supreme Court's affirmation of Proposotion 209 and race-blind justice
in the state. |
|
Analysis by Tom Wood, Co-Author of Proposition 209 "In a stunning victory for Prop. 209, all seven Justices of the California Supreme Court joined in upholding the decisions of the trial court and appellate courts below, which had struck down the race-based, targeted outreach public contracting program of the City of San Jose. "The Court's opinion was written by Justice Brown; Justices Mosk, Baxter, and Chin concurred. Justice Mosk wrote a separate concurring opinion, to indicate the kind of race-neutral outreach program that he thought would conform to Prop. 209 (now Article I, Section 31 of the California State Constitution). Chief Justice George wrote a concurring and dissenting opinion (in which Justice Werdegar concurred) in which he argued that the Court's majority opinion had unnecessarily and inappropriately used the occasion of the Hi-Voltage case to review past federal and state court adjudications of affirmative action programs; he also wrote that in so doing the Brown opinion had failed to do justice to the motives of those who have advocated non-race-neutral forms of affirmative action. "Justice Kennard wrote a separate concurring opinion. She argued that because the issue was "readily resolved" by reference to the ordinary meaning of the constitutional text and a review of the ballot materials submitted to the voters who enacted the constitution provision, it was unnecessary to "discuss potentially divisive matters, such as the history of judicial construction of federal constitutional equal protection and statutory civil rights provisions as applied to racial distinctions [as in the Court's opinion, written by Justice Brown], possible modifications of the City of San Jose's program to 'satisfy section 31 in both its end and its means' [referring to the concurring opinion of Justice Mosk], or commonly offered justifications for race-conscious affirmative action programs [referring to the concurring and dissenting opinion of Chief Justice George]." Tom Wood The text of the opinion of the California Supreme Court in "Hi-Voltage Wire Works v. City of San Jose" is available from Adversity.Net in the following formats:
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