SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Backers of affirmative action asked a federal appeals court Monday to overturn California\u2019s 15-year-old ban on considering race in public college admissions, citing a steep drop in black, Latino and Native American students at the state\u2019s elite campuses.<\/p>\n
A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal heard arguments in the latest legal challenge to Proposition 209, the landmark voter initiative that barred racial, ethnic and gender preferences in public education, employment and contracting.<\/p>\n
The affirmative action ban has withstood multiple challenges since voters approved it in 1996, but advocates say their campaign to overturn it has been bolstered by recent court decisions, as well as support from Gov. Jerry Brown<\/strong>.<\/p>\n Dozens of minority students backing the plaintiffs filled the courtroom for the hour-long hearing, when the justices questioned whether they should tamper with a 1997 ruling in which the same appellate court upheld Proposition 209.<\/p>\n Attorneys for the plaintiffs said affirmative action is needed to increase racial diversity at the University of California\u2019s most prestigious campuses and professional schools. Data shows that UC\u2019s efforts to enroll diverse student populations without considering race have failed, they argued.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" SAN FRANCISCO \u2014 Backers of affirmative action asked a federal appeals court Monday to overturn California\u2019s 15-year-old ban on considering race in public college admissions, citing a steep drop in black, Latino and Native American students at the state\u2019s elite campuses. A three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeal heard arguments in […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":210,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"pmpro_default_level":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12887","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-national-news","pmpro-has-access"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12887","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/210"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12887"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12887\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12887"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12887"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/flsentinel.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12887"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}