Articles

Author: Joshua Thompson Last week, PLF won an important victory for equality under the law in the case of Smith v. California Health and Human Services Agency.  The case challenged Cal. Health & Safety Code §§ 128330(g) & 128345 under Article I, section 31(a) of the California Constitution (often referred to as Proposition 209), whi ...

Author: Joshua Thompson PLF filed a lawsuit today against a number of California agencies and officials including Governor Schwarzenegger and Attorney General Brown.  The lawsuit alleges that the recently enacted Assembly Bill 21 (AB 21), grants preferences on the basis of race and sex in public contracting.  You can read PLF' ...

Author: Joshua Thompson Over at The Volokh Conspiracy, Ilya Somin has an interesting post on the justificaiton(s) for race/ethnic preferences at public universities.  He notes how there are two general theories that are held out to justify such preferences: (1) compensatory justice; and (2) promotion of diversity.  He notes how th ...

Author: Joshua Thompson That's the title of a new article in California Lawyer, a magazine sent to me for free as an active member of the California bar.  But this is not just an article in a magazine.  California lawyers who read the article, can answer a few questions about it, send in a check for … ...

Author: Joshua Thompson Discrimination.  Period.  With respect to race, it means treating certain people differently because they have a certain favored or disfavored skin color. I am often dismayed by opponents of racial preferences (opponents of discrimination), or proponents of equality under the law, when they use the the term & ...

Author: Ralph W. Kasarda The United States Supreme Court heard oral argument today in Lewis v. City of Chicago. In this case, African-American fire department applicants sued the City of Chicago under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. They claimed that a written examination was discriminatory when it resulted in Chicago’s decision ...

Author: Ralph W. Kasarda The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act was signed into law by President Obama just over a year ago, on February 17, 2009.  The Recovery Act distributes $787 billion dollars through tax benefits, contracts, grants, loans and entitlements.  Soon after the Recovery Act became law, an argument emerged that the s ...

Author: Joshua Thompson Mindingthecampus has an excellent article on BAMN's (a radical group that supports racial preferences By Any Means Necessary) ridiculous lawsuit against Proposition 209. The article points out that the lawsuit is nothing more than attempt to smear Ward Connerly, a man who has made it his mission to cham ...

Author: Ralph W. Kasarda For anyone unfamiliar with Native Hawaiian language, a "haole" is a term used to describe a foreigner, especially a white person. Over time, it has become a derogatory slang term to be used in contempt of white people. See here. While some Native Hawaiians may use the term in contempt, others … ...