Lawyers Line Up Against New Initiative

Jahna Berry, Recorder Staff Writer

April 5, 2002

As Ward Connerly's supporters race to collect enough signatures to put another controversial race initiative on the November ballot, several East Bay and minority lawyer groups have lined up against it.

Connerly, a University of California regent and chair of the American Civil Rights Coalition, was the driving force behind anti-affirmative action Proposition 209. Now, he's pushing the Racial Privacy Initiative, which would prohibit the state, city and county government agencies from classifying a person by race.

As a civil rights-era lawyer, "Thurgood Marshall talked about the odiousness of racial classifications," said Connerly, referring to the late U.S. Supreme Court justice. Now, groups like the NAACP want to keep race categories, he observed, adding, "Are things worse than they were 40 years ago?"

Several local bar associations say that race data is a critical way to track the impact of social policy.

Race data "holds the government accountable for goals that deal with racial equality and diversity," said Rocio Fierro, president of East Bay La Raza Lawyers Association. Her group opposes the initiative.

On Thursday, the East Bay Latino attorney group, the Alameda County Bar Association, the Charles Houston Bar Association, the regional branch of the National Bar Association, the Lawyers' Committee for Civil Rights and the California Association of Black Lawyers announced they've passed a joint resolution opposing the initiative.

Some of those groups worry that the wording of the initiative will confuse voters, who won't realize the law's impact.

"A lot of the progress that we have made with regard to access to justice will be nullified by this," said Alameda County Bar Association President Kathleen Hegen.

National Bar Association members will meet in San Francisco in July for the group's annual convention and the initiative will be on the African-American group's agenda, said regional director Vernon Goins.

The initiative will hurt the legal community's effort to keep track of diversity, the resolution said.

According to the U.S. Census, 47 percent of Californians are white, 32 percent are Hispanic, 11 percent are Asian-American, 7 percent are African-American and 1 percent is Native-American. In comparison, a 1997 California Judicial Council study said 89 percent of the state's superior court judges are white.

A November 2001 survey by the California Bar Journal found that 83 percent of California lawyers are white, 6 percent Asian, 3.7 percent Hispanic and 2.4 percent African-American.

The bar associations join critics who fear that the initiative would cripple efforts to study racial discrimination, urban planning and other issues.

Supporters of the Racial Privacy law say that researchers and agencies can rely on race data collected by the U.S. Census. Information about diversity in the legal community is largely collected by private entities, they say.

"There is no science behind racial classifications," said Kevin Nguyen, executive director of the American Civil Rights Coalition. The categories hark back to the "one drop" rule, which is a legacy of the slavery and Jim Crow era, he said.

"All data shows is where there is parity or disparity," he said, noting that courts don't accept pure statistical disparity as evidence of discrimination.

Lawyers, who use race statistics for lawsuits, "have a vested interest in maintaining the status quo," said Connerly.

Many of the same legal groups that oppose the Racial Privacy Initiative also opposed Prop 209, he said.

The Racial Privacy Initiative lists a few exceptions. Medical research would be exempt. The Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which investigates discrimination, would have to stop using race classifications after 10 years.

If lawmakers find any "compelling state interest" to collect race data, they must pass it by two-thirds vote and the governor must approve.

Law enforcers can describe people by race, but the initiative prohibits the government from requiring police agencies to maintain records that track people based on racial categories.

The initiative's supporters must collect 670,000 signatures by April 19 to put the proposed law on the November ballot. The group plans to submit 1 million signatures by the deadline, Connerly said.

Reporter Jahna Berry's e-mail address is jberry@therecorder.com.