State OKs petition to ban racial preference

Affirmative action backers say wording is misleading

Friday, December 12, 2003

BY JUDY PUTNAM
Ann Arbor News Lansing Bureau

LANSING - Supporters of affirmative action say wording on a petition to ban racial preferences in Michigan will unfairly fool voters into thinking it's a civil rights initiative.

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"If they want to put garbage in the constitution, I guess they have a right, but at the very least they've got to tell people what they are signing," said George B. Washington, an attorney for the Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action by Any Means Necessary (BAMN) and United for Equality and Affirmative Action.

The groups made an unsuccessful plea Thursday in calling on the four-member Board of State Canvassers to reject the petition from the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative to ban racial preferences in college admissions and in public hiring. Backers in January plan to start gathering the 317,757 signatures needed to put it on the Nov. 2, 2004 ballot.

The board voted 3-0, with one member abstaining, to approve the form, saying its job was to make sure the petition was properly formatted, not to rule on its merits. The vote had been postponed from last week, when it was determined that notice of the meeting hadn't been properly posted.

Washington said he filed a lawsuit in Ingham County Circuit Court Thursday challenging the Board of State Canvassers' decision.

The petition calls for a new section to be added to the state constitution titled "Civil Rights."

But opponents said Michigan already has a civil rights section, prohibiting discrimination based on race, and the petition must state that it is amending the civil rights section of the constitution.

Tim O'Brien, who is leading the petition drive, said it's fair to call it a civil rights issue.

"It is absolutely abhorrent that the government should treat people differently" based on race, he said. "Every citizen is entitled to be treated the same."

O'Brien, 52, of Allen Park, said he's a longtime civil rights activist.

"I was in the civil rights movement probably before a lot of the people in this room were born," he said about the few-dozen student activists who staged a protest outside the state office where the board meeting was held.

The petition is backed by University of California regent Ward Connerly, who founded the American Civil Rights Institute to end affirmative action policies.

Connerly became interested in Michigan after a U.S. Supreme Court decision in June upholding affirmative action in college admissions in a case against the University of Michigan.

Last week, retired Brig. Gen. Mike Rice, a former deputy director of the Michigan Department of Military and Veteran Affairs, announced the formation of a group to fight the petition.

The group, Citizens for a United Michigan, includes prominent business people, unions, the NAACP and the Michigan Catholic Conference.

Voting to approve the petition were GOP board members Katherine DeGrow and Eric Pelton, and Democrat Dorothy Jones. Democrat Doyle O'Connor abstained.

Contact Judy Putnam at

(517) 487-8888 or at jputnam@boothnewspapers.com.