A win for equality: States end race and sex quotas in public service
Americans are generous with their time—coaching youth sports, feeding the hungry, cleaning parks, and serving their communities in countless ways. Many also volunteer on state boards and commissions, helping shape policies that affect us all. But what if your chance to serve depended not on your skills or dedication, but on your race or sex? Until recently, that was the reality in at least 25 states. It’s an injustice that’s finally being addressed.
One of those states—South Carolina—required a majority of the nine-person Commission for Minority Affairs to be African American. Created in 1993, the Commission for Minority Affairs studies socio-economic issues affecting minorities in South Carolina and implements programs necessary to address those issues, among other things.
When Pine Hill Indian Tribe Chief Michelle Mitchum inquired about being appointed to the Commission, she was told not to bother trying because she was the wrong race. And given the statutory mandate for a majority of Commission members to be African American, South Carolina resident Sandy Chiong—a woman of Chinese, Cuban, and Spanish descent—was categorically disqualified from consideration. As a result of the blatantly discriminatory criteria for serving on the Commission, both women sued late last year.
Other states impose discriminatory criteria for service on practically all of their boards and commissions. In Montana, for example, state law required the governor to “attain gender balance and proportional representation of minorities resident” in the state when making appointments to all state boards. Likewise, in Tennessee, the governor was required to “ensure that at least one” person serving on every state board was “a member of a racial minority.”
Given that Montana’s and Tennessee’s laws covered even the state medical boards, Do No Harm—an organization dedicated to keeping identity politics out of medical education, research, and clinical practice—challenged both laws in court to ensure that those regulating physicians are chosen solely due to individual merit and qualifications.
Still, other states, like Arkansas, had a patchwork system of racial preferences and quotas for numerous state boards. For instance, the governor was required to appoint one “member of a minority race” to the occupational therapy committee and at least one “member of an ethnic minority” to the counseling board. In response, Do No Harm and the Foundation Against Intolerance & Racism sued to ensure all qualified individuals interested in serving on both boards had the opportunity for equal consideration.
Racial preferences and quotas for public service are never a good idea: They serve only to divide and single people out for favor or disfavor based on personal characteristics they cannot control. Such preferences and quotas also treat members of minority groups as interchangeable, ignoring the individual qualifications, experience, and ideas that everyone uniquely possesses. Worse still, such quotas violate the American promise of equal protection guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.
Perhaps worried about violating the Constitution—or at least, worried about defending unconstitutional laws in court—the governors of South Carolina, Montana, Tennessee, and Arkansas signed bills this spring that removed discriminatory requirements for state boards and commissions. Their actions are to be commended. Now, everyone in those states is on equal footing to demonstrate their interest and credentials for why they should be selected for the important role of serving the citizens of their state.
The work is not done, however. Lawsuits challenging similar race-based preferences and quotas for service on public boards in Alabama, Louisiana, Minnesota, and West Virginia are ongoing. And still, many other states have discriminatory laws in place. But with every racial preference and quota that ends, we move closer to Martin Luther King Jr.’s dream of a society where people are not “judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.”
