California Taking Up Affirmative Action Again?

SACRAMENTO, Calif. (AP) — Nearly 20 years after California became the first state to ban the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions, a proposal that could reinstate such affirmative action has sparked a backlash that forged a new divide in the state's powerful Democratic Party and created opportunity for conservatives.

The debate is unfolding in the nation's most populous and most ethnically diverse state as an unrelated U.S. Supreme Court ruling upholds voters' rights to decide whether racial considerations should factor into university selections.

The California proposal could have allowed voters to decide whether to rescind their state's campus affirmative action ban, but unexpected pushback from families of Asian descent who mobilized through Chinese-language media, staged rallies and organized letter-writing campaigns has all but killed the measure.

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