Is California’s deep-blue legislature out of control?
It sure seems that way to me. Recently, Gov. Newsom approved a clearly unconstitutional bill mandating racial and LGBTQ quotas for boards of directors of private companies. That’s pretty brazen.
He also signed legislation creating a task force to examine the possibility of slave reparations—even though California was never a slave state.
A third example is last month’s legislation forcing California State University students to take an ethnic studies course. If a conservative legislature had interfered with a curricular matter like that, the mainstream media would be going bananas.
Probably the most consequential legislation to pass in the last few months is the effort to repeal these words from the state constitution: “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.”
Put there in 1996 by Proposition 209, those words were a response to over-the-top race-preferential admissions policies at the University of California and similar preferences for woman-owned and minority-owned businesses in public contracting.
The Left has been gunning for Prop 209 ever since. The legislature in particular has tried twice before. But maybe the third time is a charm.
Prop 209, however, can’t be repealed without the consent of voters. So all the legislature could do was call for a referendum. Called Prop 16, it’s on the ballot for this election. I’ll be voting no.
Prop 16 is not an effort to help the disadvantaged. Under current law, the University of California is free to give a leg up in admissions to students from low-income families. And it’s been doing so for decades (partly in response to Prop 209).
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