California lawmakers vote to restore affirmative action, sending question to voters

The passage of ACA 5 is a stunning and historic victory for progressive AAPI groups

By Cheyenne Cheng, Sunjay Lee, and Andrew Peng

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SACRAMENTO — California lawmakers approved a constitutional amendment on Wednesday that repeals the state’s 24-year-old ban on affirmative action, marking a stunning and historic victory for progressive Asian American advocacy groups.

• The details: ACA 5, a proposal that undoes Proposition 209, cleared the state Senate in a 30–10 vote and now goes before voters in the November general election. The California Asian Pacific Islander Legislative Caucus, led by Assemblyman David Chiu (D-San Francisco), announced that it was backing the measure on Monday. The measure also enjoyed support from AAPI members of Congress, including Ted Lieu, Mark Takano, T.J. Cox, Ami Bera, and Doris Matsui.
• On the Senate floor: “The problem with ACA 5 is it takes the position we must fight discrimination with more discrimination,” Sen. Ling Ling Chang (R-Diamond Bar) said in her remarks ahead of the vote. APILC vice-chair Sen. Richard Pan (D-Sacramento) replied that the current ban on affirmative action is “blindness towards structural racism… This is an issue of fairness and equal opportunity for all Californians.”
• Clear divisions: ACA 5 split Asian American members of the California State Assembly along partisan lines earlier this month. Eight Democrats supported the measure, while three Republicans opposed it. Two Democrats and one Republican sat out the vote.
• Fierce resistance: Many Chinese-born immigrants have been the most vocal opponents to affirmative action, according to LAist’s Josie Huang, fearing that racial preferences will deny their children seats at selective schools. Groups including the Asian American Coalition for Education — led by Orlando businessman and Republican congressional hopeful Yukong Zhao — have been organizing through WeChat for months, and a March petition urging the Senate to reject ACA 5 garnered more than 130,000 signatures.
• But dozens of AAPI groups — including the San Francisco-based nonprofit Chinese for Affirmative Action and the Asian Law Caucus — point to years of APIAVote surveys consistently showing that a majority of Asian Americans back affirmative action, though support is the smallest among Chinese Americans.
• Nationwide fights: California is currently one of eight states that have bans on affirmative action, and battles over the legality of the programs have roared back into public view across the country — thanks to the Trump administration’s public backing of conservative groups seeking to scrap race-based admissions policies.
• In October, Harvard University prevailed after a federal judge refused to strike down its race-conscious admissions policies. But the closely-watched case is expected to end up in front of a less-friendly Supreme Court, and the U.S. Department of Justice filed an amicus brief in March arguing that Harvard’s process “has repeatedly penalized one particular racial group: Asian Americans.”
• Meanwhile, voters in Washington State narrowly rejected Referendum 88 in November, which would have ended a two-decade ban on the use of affirmative action as a factor in public employment, contracting, and public education.

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