Washington State Bans Government Affirmative Action

Wednesday November 4 7:10 AM EDT

By HAL SPENCER
Associated Press Writer

SEATTLE (AP) - The voters have spoken, making Washington the second state to ban racial or gender preferences in government hiring and contracting or in college admissions.

Now it may be up to lawyers and judges to determine just what they voted for.

Backers said Tuesday's passage of Initiative 200 showed voters understood that affirmative action programs are unfair. Foes said the measure passed because voters were misled by the wording.

Minorities and women will suffer through increased exclusion from government jobs and contracts and admission to colleges, opponents said.

Voters said, ```Hey, look. This makes sense. We should have done this years ago. It's time for us to look beyond what makes us different,''' said John Carlson, the conservative political commentator who headed the campaign for the measure.

``They are clearly saying, `We want to treat everybody equally,''' agreed Ward Connerly, the California businessman whose organization spearheaded passage of a similar measure in his state. The group also helped plan and finance the Washington campaign.

But Arthur Fletcher, former assistant labor secretary under President Nixon, said there was ``a lot of confusion out there about what the initiative would do. I expect there will be a battery of lawyers to test exactly how this is going to be carried out.''

The wording of the initiative may have played a crucial role. Polls and experience in similar contests show voters tend to oppose measures they're told will diminish or do away with affirmative action. But when a measure talks about banning ``preferential treatment,'' the public tends to support it.

The Washington initiative asked whether the government should be ``prohibited from discriminating against or granting preferential treatment to individuals or groups based on race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin.''

The staff of Attorney General Christine Gregoire predicted last week that the measure would spark a flurry of lawsuits.

``Preferential treatment'' can mean many things, their report said, and it's hard to determine how the measure would affect minorities and women.

For example:

-Can a publicly owned college allow students to reserve a section of a dormitory or lounge for a particular ethnic group?

-Can a public university participate in the awarding of a privately funded scholarship if the scholarship specifies that the award must go to a particular ethnic group?

-In state government hiring and contracting, can an agency recruit women and minorities to broaden the pool of potential candidates for government jobs or contracts, or is the activity a type of ``preferential treatment?''

Return to the I-200 page.
Return to the Affirmative Action and Diversity Page

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