The 209 Shield

From KRON-4: An Asian American student claims that affirmative action is to blame for his recent rejections from top tier colleges and universities across the United States. However, the law which impacts admissions of at least one of those colleges prevents racial preference when considering students.

Jon Wang, 18, of Florida told Fox News that he applied to MIT, CalTech, Princeton, Harvard, Carnegie-Mellon and University of California, Berkeley, but was rejected by each of them. Wang’s parents are both Chinese immigrants, and he argues that his Asian American heritage worked against him in his application process, thanks to affirmative action policies. However, one of the colleges that Wang was denied by has published reports which show it may not be the case.

Wang is one of the plaintiffs that has filed suit against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina over affirmative action, and the cases are expected to be decided by the U.S. Supreme Court late this month. The Harvard and UNC cases have been separated into two separate decisions since one institution is public and one is private.

The UNC case is will consider whether the school was unwilling to adopt a “race-neutral alternative” to affirmative action. The case against Harvard will determine if the university was in violation of the Civil Rights Act by “discriminating against Asian-American applicants.”

As for Wang’s rejection from UC Berkeley, a 1998* California law banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. The law, called Proposition 209, approved by voters in 1996, ended race and gender-blind criteria for admissions decisions at public institutions in the Golden State. This law prevented affirmative action from negatively impacting Wang’s admission to the public university...

Full story at https://www.kron4.com/news/bay-area/asian-american-student-claims-affirmative-action-prevented-his-admissions-but-california-law-doesnt-allow-that/.

We have noted in earlier posting that Prop 209 - perhaps paradoxically - may act as a shield against challenges to UC admissions practices on affirmative action grounds since the proposition forbids affirmative action and UC will assert it complies. The shield is not impenetrable, but a plaintiff would have to prove that UC has a de facto affirmative action policy, i.e., that it is violating 209.

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*Prop 209 was enacted by voters in 1996, not 1998, as the article later states. But it came into effect at UC in 1998.