Court upholds California affirmative action ban
Source: AP
By CHRISTINA HOAG, Associated Press – 27 minutes ago
LOS ANGELES (AP) — Affirmative action proponents took a hit Monday as a federal appeals court panel upheld California's ban on using race, ethnicity and gender in admitting students to public colleges and universities.
The ruling marked the second time the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals turned back a challenge to the state's landmark voter initiative, Proposition 209, which was passed in 1996.
Affirmative action proponents, who had requested that the court reconsider its 1997 decision after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that affirmative action could be used in college admissions, said they would continue fighting.
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(Attorney George B. Washington, who is representing the group of minority students and advocacy groups that filed the latest challenge in January 2010) said he would ask the full appellate court to review the case since this decision was issued by a three-judge panel.
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Read more: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5hNzPnMA20yvuvCn8kPDkwsqQomFA?
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Here's what the Orwellianly named "California Civil Rights Initiative" accomplished:
http://wc.arizona.edu/papers/91/139/05_1_m.html
We experienced a 43 percent drop in African American and a 33 percent drop in Latino admissions. Berkeley had even worse numbers; there was a 66 percent drop in African Americans and 59 percent in Latino admits. 1,200 African American, Latino and Native American applicants were denied entrance to UCLA and Berkeley, with an average GPA of 4.0 and an average SAT score of 1280. Again, that is hardly unqualified. These are the students who would have been here.
To bring a sense of horror to you, in 1953 (the year before Brown vs. Board of Education) 43 African Americans enrolled at UCLA; next year the expected number of enrollments is 50. There was one African American at Berkeley's Boalt Hall Law school this year; Little Rock had nine. And why is it that no one is mentioning the 7 percent drop in women's admissions? Or how about the 5 percent drop in white admissions (socioeconomic cases like myself)?
The truth is, we do have people at UCLA who received preferential treatment in admissions. The L.A. Times broke this story last year. These people are unqualified and shouldn't be here. These people have an average GPA of 3.2 and average SAT scores of 1000. The Times story cited that they were the sons and daughters of friends of the regents and the governor. The regents allow themselves the right to get people into UC schools and refuse to change this practice. How many of these students were allowed into UCLA and Berkeley? Three hundred. Three hundred students with an average GPA of 3.2 and average SAT scores of 1000 were admitted over the past three years. That is preferential treatment, and those are unqualified students. And that happened again this year, and again next year and every year after that.
And spiraling tuition costs will pretty much finish the job. 
I hope the appeal is successful.
Only 30% of the current freshman class is white. Simple math tells us that the remaining 70% are minorities. From the article in the OP:
Although blacks, Latinos and Native Americans comprise about half of California's high school graduates, they make up only 19.5 percent of the current freshman class at UC Berkeley. Whites compose roughly 30 percent and Asians 48 percent. The remainder is out-of-state students.
