SACRAMENTO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--USA Today has published a Pacific Legal Foundation op-ed that applauds this week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling that upheld the voter-enacted Michigan Civil Rights Initiative (MCRI). The op-ed is linked at this Pacific Legal Foundation blog post: http://blog.pacificlegal.org/?p=26869.
The MCRI prohibits race-based preferences in government employment, contracting, and education. It was struck down by the Sixth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, as somehow violating equal rights principles.
“Say again?” writes PLF Principal Attorney Meriem L. Hubbard in the USA Today op-ed. “A mandate for equal protection conflicted with the federal Equal Protection Clause?”
The Supreme Court did “a service for the cause of fairness — and logic — by reversing the Sixth Circuit’s self-contradictory ruling,” Hubbard writes.
The op-ed notes that voters in six states, counting Michigan, have outlawed race-based preferences. Now that the Supreme Court has correctly recognized their right to do so, “voters everywhere should consider following suit,” Hubbard argues. In order to prevent injuries to anyone based on race, she argues, we must prohibit government from categorizing and judging people on the basis of skin color.
The case is Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action. PLF’s amicus brief to the Supreme Court in support of the MCRI may be found at PLF’s website: www.pacificlegal.org.
About Pacific Legal Foundation
Donor-supported Pacific Legal Foundation (www.pacificlegal.org) is a legal watchdog organization that litigates for limited government, property rights, individual rights, and equal protection under the law, in courts across the country.
In California, PLF has been the leading courtroom defender of Proposition 209, which served as the model for the MCRI by outlawing race- and sex-based discrimination and preferences by government.
