PLF seeking information from Davis and Berkeley

Last week, a number of friends, colleagues, and outside attorneys emailed me this post from Josh Blackman.   It seems that both UC Davis and UC Berkeley are requiring law review authors to disclose their race and sex when submitting articles for publication.   This raises a number of very troubling questions:  Why do these two law reviews need to know the race and sex of submitting authors?  What are they doing with this information?  Are they granting preferential treatment to individuals from certain races?  In order to find out the answers to these questions, I sent Public Records Act requests to both law schools.  Those schools received our requests yesterday.  [UC Davis PRA request; UC Berkeley PRA request.]

PLF has defended Proposition 209 — California’s landmark constitutional amendment prohibiting race and sex preferences — since its inception.  We have been involved in every appellate decision interpreting Prop. 209.  Proposition 209 has withstood every challenge to its constitutionality.  Nevertheless, it still amazes me how frequently California officials attempt to get around its colorblind command.

I certainly hope that neither California school is granting race- and sex-based preferences in its article submission process,  but I wouldn’t be surprised.  I will let you know as soon as we hear back from the law schools.

Update — A helpful reader spotted a typo in the response time I had given the two schools.  [The requests required responses in 2011.]  I have since corrected that error and resent the public records act requests.  The schools received our revised requests on February 21.  The versions linked above are the operative requests.