Miami Attorney: End Affirmative Action Program

from In Brief Section of the Miami Herald
September 18, 1999

An attorney for two engineering firms challenging Miami-Dade County's affirmative
 action program for design contracts urged a federal judge on Friday to end the
 policy.

 Lawyer Herbert Schlanger told U.S. District Judge William Hoeveler that the
 county's program benefiting blacks, Hispanics and women is no longer necessary
 because they enjoy parity with whites.

 ``What we want is to eliminate discrimination, not divvy up the economic pie,''
 Schlanger said.

 It could be a matter of weeks before the judge issues his decision. If he does stop
 the program, at least 27 minority design proposals would be affected, according
 to county officials.

 In February, the County Commission voted to push ahead with the program for
 minority engineers and architects, despite warnings from their own staff that it
 would violate the 1994 law that established the program.

 The current design program sets aside 25 percent of contract awards for
 Hispanics, 17 percent for women and 12 percent for blacks. But the county's
 statistics on contract awards suggest the program is no longer needed.
 Affirmative action programs have come under fire nationwide in recent years as
 courts have established stricter standards for them. The current lawsuit is the
 second such challenge the county has faced this decade. In 1995, six contracting
 associations succeeded in getting the court to abolish the county's set-aside
 program.

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Carl Gutiérrez-Jones
Department of English
University of California, Santa Barbara
e-mail: carlgj@humanitas.ucsb.edu