*****FOR RELEASE MONDAY, FEBRUARY 15, 2010*****

Students File Landmark Federal Lawsuit to Undo Prop 209 and Restore Affirmative Action in California

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Contact: Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Immigrant Rights and Integration and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN)
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Latina/o, black, and Native American students seeking admission to the University of California (UC) are announcing today that they will file a federal lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court, Northern District of California to overturn California's Proposition 209 and restore affirmative action in the UC system. The suit asserts that Proposition 209 violates the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution. The defendants in the suit are Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger, the UC Regents, and UC President Mark Yudof.

"It is an injustice and a social explosion waiting to happen for California to enforce a system of de facto segregation in which Latina/o, black, and Native American students, who comprise a fast-growing majority of California's high-school students, are almost entirely shut out of this state's most selective public universities," said George Washington, a Detroit labor and civil rights attorney. "The level of segregation at UC-Berkeley relative to the state population is matched only in the Deep South. Proposition 209 cannot stand," Washington said.

BAMN lawyers represented students in the successful legal defense of the Los Angeles and Berkeley school desegregation programs. Most importantly, BAMN represented the student-defendant interveners in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003), the University of Michigan Law School case in which affirmative action programs were upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court. Driver and Washington are leading civil rights attorneys in defending affirmative action, desegregation programs, and voting rights cases. BAMN also defeated Ward Connerly's efforts to get anti-affirmative action ballot measures in Oklahoma, Arizona, and Missouri in 2008.

Shanta Driver, a Detroit-based labor and civil rights lawyer and National Chair of BAMN, will serve as lead counsel with George Washington. Ronald Cruz of Oakland, Monica Smith of Los Angeles, and Joyce Schon of Detroit are the other members of the legal team (see attached).

"This is a new day in California, with students demanding equal access and opportunity in what should be our public universities. We won't sit in the back of the bus any longer," said Issamar Camacho, a UC-Berkeley student who plans to apply to Berkeley Law School, a BAMN organizer and plaintiff.

Driver and Washington urge all students, all public officials, and all organizations that support affirmative action to join in this challenge to Proposition 209.

In 2007, Latina/o, black, and Native American students comprised 45.1% of California's high school graduates. However, even after 13 years of efforts by the University of California to increase diversity, these groups comprised only 16.9% and 19.9% of new freshman admits at UC-Berkeley and UCLA respectively.

"Qualified Latina/o and black students are being rejected by the UC's in higher proportions than UC qualified white students," Driver said. "BAMN and the student plaintiffs are challenging Proposition 209 because Latina/o, black, Native American and other minority students are forced to labor under an unequal political procedure in seeking redress for discrimination in admissions. Every other group in the state of California, from veterans to rural students to disabled students to lesbian gay students have the right to ask the UC Regents to employ an admissions system that will increase their numbers in the UC student body. The only group legally barred from petitioning the Regents for a change in the admissions system to increase the admission of students from their communities are Latina/o, black, and other underrepresented minority students."

"Proposition 209 requires by law permanent de facto segregation in the UC system," Ronald Cruz, BAMN attorney and Boalt Law School alum. "None of the efforts in the UC's in the last 13 years have been able to change this reality. We will not allow our state to continue to be the legal, social, and political center of the New Jim Crow."

BAMN was founded in 1995 in response to the UC Regents' ban on affirmative action. In 2001, BAMN led a student movement that resulted in the UC Regents reversing their ban on affirmative action had been used as the model for Proposition 209. Last year, in Coral Construction Co. v. San Francisco regarding the use of affirmative action programs in contracting, Attorney General Jerry Brown stated that 209 is unconstitutional.

BAMN is leading the statewide campaign to get the UC Regents to create a UC-wide Dream Act. They are building for a mass mobilization to the UC Regents meeting on March 23-25 to win the creation of a UC-wide institutional financial aid program for undocumented students—a UC-wide Dream Act.

Shanta Driver, lead attorney and BAMN National Chair, emphasized that "while our legal arguments are irrefutable, whether or not we win this case is a political question—a question of social power. If the new civil rights movement can continue to grow and reach new heights, we can convince even the most conservative judges to restore affirmative action in California."

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THE ATTORNEYS IN THE CHALLENGE TO PROPOSITION 209

The law firm of Scheff, Washington & Driver, P.C. of Detroit, Michigan is the lead counsel in the challenge to Proposition 209.

GEORGE WASHINGTON and SHANTA DRIVER are labor and civil rights attorneys from Detroit, Michigan. They were the lead attorneys in the cases that challenged the racially-targeted fraud that Ward Connerly used in attempting to get proposals identical to Prop 209 placed on the 2004 and 2006 Michigan ballots, in the legal challenges that helped keep Connerly's proposal off the ballot in Oklahoma and Arizona in 2008, and they are now the lead attorneys in the case challenging the constitutionality of Michigan's Proposal 2, which is pending in the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit.

Driver is the National Chair of the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, Integration, and Immigrant Rights and Fight for Equality by Any Means Necessary (BAMN). She was the legal architect of the successful student intervention into Grutter v Bollinger, the University of Michigan Law School case in which affirmative action was upheld by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. She also directed the intervention into lawsuits which upheld the voluntary desegregation programs in both the Berkeley (2004) and the Los Angeles (2006-08) school districts against Proposition 209-based challenges. Ms. Driver led BAMN's successful campaigns in the spring and summer of 2008 that kept Ward Connerly's anti-affirmative action referendums off the ballots of Oklahoma, Missouri and Arizona, turning Connerly's hoped-for "Super Tuesday" campaign into a "Super Lose-Day" for his attacks on affirmative action. Driver is a 2002 graduate of Wayne State Law School.

Washington was one of the attorneys representing the student interveners in Grutter v. Bollinger. He has represented the UAW, AFSCME, the Teamsters, and various independent unions. He acted as counsel for the plaintiffs in the lawsuit against the state takeover of the Detroit Public Schools, for the plaintiffs in major sexual harassment cases against Ford Motor Co., for plaintiffs in major civil rights cases against the University of Michigan, and for plaintiffs who had been killed, wounded and severely injured by the police. He is a 1973 graduate of Harvard Law School.

RONALD CRUZ is from Oakland, CA and a member of the California Bar. He has been active in affirmative action litigation since he was an undergraduate at UC-Berkeley, when he became a named individual student intervener in the Grutter v. Bollinger case. Cruz organized hundreds of students and parents to demonstrate at the court and become defendant-interveners in Scheff, Washington, & Driver's successful legal interventions in the Berkeley and Los Angeles desegregation cases. Cruz is a 2009 graduate of Berkeley (Boalt) School of Law.

MONICA SMITH is from Detroit. She was a campus leader while a student at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor and campaigned to increase underrepresented minority student enrollment. She assembled plaintiffs and witnesses to expose and challenge the racially-targeted voter fraud employed by Ward Connerly's 2004 and 2006 Michigan ballot-initiative petition drives. In 2008, Smith coordinated the investigation into racially-targeted voter fraud in Connerly's Arizona campaign that led to the disqualification of Connerly's Arizona version of Prop 209. Smith is a 2009 graduate of Wayne State Law School.

JOYCE SCHON is from Detroit. She coordinated BAMN's successful effort to reverse the UC Regents' ban on affirmative action in 2001. Before becoming a lawyer, for many years Schon was a union steward in Service Employees International Union (SEIU) campaigning for union democracy and employees' rights in the workplace. Schon is a 2009 graduate of Wayne State Law School.

BAMN - THE COALITION TO DEFEND AFFIRMATIVE ACTION, INTEGRATION, AND IMMIGRANT RIGHTS AND FIGHT FOR EQUALITY BY ANY MEANS NECESSARY

BAMN is this nation's most successful civil rights organization standing in defense of affirmative action. BAMN was founded in 1995 at the University of California Berkeley campus to reverse the UC Regents' ban on affirmative action which had been secured by then-UC Regent Ward Connerly. BAMN is now a national organization, with college and high school student organizers in chapters across the country.

Since its founding, BAMN has persistently fought to defend affirmative action against right-wing attack across the country. BAMN organized the student campaign to force the UC Regents to reverse their ban on affirmative action. The campaign culminated in 7,000-person demonstration at the UC-Berkeley campus on March 8, 2001 and led to all the Regents—including Ward Connerly himself—unanimously reversing their ban.

BAMN was pivotal to defending affirmative action at the U.S. Supreme Court. BAMN coordinated the independent student-interveners' legal defense in Grutter v. Bollinger and organized the 50,000-person March on Washington on the day of oral argument before the high court, thus shifting the national debate and the court's decision.

BAMN defeated Ward Connerly's effort to place a Proposition 209-style initiative on the 2004 Michigan ballot. In 2006, BAMN secured a federal ruling establishing racially-targeted voter fraud in Mr. Connerly's petition campaign. In 2008, BAMN organized street voter education efforts that halted ballot initiative drives in Arizona, Oklahoma, and Missouri and helped secure Connerly's defeat at the polls in Colorado.

BAMN is committed to building a new mass, integrated, independent, and youth-led civil rights movement. It is unique among all civil rights organizations in uniting the questions of immigrant rights and affirmative action in its work. BAMN is committed to uniting the large and powerful struggles for black and Latina/o equality into a common fight for equality.

In addition to organizing the movement to overturn Proposition 209, BAMN is presently organizing a statewide mass student campaign to win the U.C. Dream Act—including a statewide demonstration at the UC Regents' March 23-25 meeting, where the Regents will consider providing financial aid to undocumented immigrant students on a non-discriminatory basis.