URGENT UPDATE: APPEAL HEARING ON PROP 2 CASE SCHEDULED FOR MARCH 7, 2012 AT THE 6TH CIRCUIT IN CINCINNATI: THOUSANDS NEEDED AT COURT TO DEMONSTRATE MASS SUPPORT FOR AFFIRMATIVE ACTION!
Proposal 2 – the ban on affirmative action in Michigan initiated by Ward Connerly – was adopted in a racially divided vote in a statewide referendum in November 2006. Nine out of ten black voters voted against the Proposal, but it carried by a 58 percent margin because white voters voted for it by two to one.
The day after the election, UEAALDF filed a lawsuit on behalf of BAMN, challenging the law’s constitutionality under the Fourteenth Amendment.
On July 1, 2011, The United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit declared Proposal 2 to be unconstitutional. The Sixth Circuit held that Michigan could not manipulate the political process by making it impossible for racial minorities to seek admission programs that benefited them while allowing every other group to seek any admission program that they wanted.
Michigan Attorney General Bill Schuette appealed the ruling, and was granted an “en banc” review by all 15 active judges on the court. The en banc review is currently scheduled for March, 2012.
Our challenge of Prop 2 has gained broad support. Eight amicus (“friend of the Court”) briefs have been filed in support of the BAMN legal challenge to Prop 2. Briefs were filed by the following parties: 1) The Michigan Civil Rights Commission, (2) Committee of Law Professors and Constitutional Historians, (3) California Social Science Researchers and Admissions Experts; (4) the cities of Oakland and San Francisco and the counties of San Francisco and Alameda, (5) the California NAACP, (6) the City of Grand Rapids and (7) Distinguished Political Science Professors on the issue of how state-wide ballot measures are uniquely disadvantageous to minority interests, (8) Historians, Constitutional Scholars and Social Scientists (34 scholars who have devoted much of their careers to the study of the abolition movement, Reconstruction-era history, civil rights, and race relations.)
Our victory at the Sixth Circuit places affirmative action back on the agenda for the whole country.
Supplemental Brief on en banc review