Federal court to hear renewed challenge to California's affirmative action ban
http://www.contracostatimes.com/california/ci...

Reviving California's fierce debate over affirmative action programs, dozens of black and Latino students will turn to a federal appeals court this week in a bid to end the state's 16-year-old ban on using race and ethnicity as factors in public university admissions.

In arguments set for Monday in San Francisco, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will consider the latest challenge to voter-approved Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action programs in all public agencies across the state.

The same court in 1997 upheld Proposition 209, but civil rights advocates, armed with a decade of new data on student admissions to the University of California system and what they consider a favorable 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decision, are pressing for a different outcome.

And unlike the last legal battle over Proposition 209, when former Republican Gov. Pete Wilson backed the affirmative action ban, civil rights lawyers now have the state on their side. Gov. Jerry Brown late last year jumped into the case, urging the 9th Circuit to find that Proposition 209's limits on race and ethnicity preferences in UC admissions are unconstitutional.

The latest lawsuit specifically targets the UC system on behalf of more than 40 black and Latino students, many of whom graduated from high schools in Los Angeles and Oakland that don't offer the type of programs that ready them for UC's rigorous admissions standards.