CALIFORNIA'S CIVIL RIGHTS INTITIATIVE WITHSTANDS COURT TEST

The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education or public contracting.

This week brought news that Golden State voters have been vindicated on the subject of the California Civil Rights Initiative they passed last November by 700,000 votes. No sooner had that initiative passed than a gaggle of the usual subjects, led by the American Civil Liberties Union, sued in federal court to halt enforcement of the amendment voters had approved so handily.

Within days of the election, the ACLU went shopping for a friendly judge whom they knew to be especially susceptible to their argument against the initiative, and found one in U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson. Judge Henderson had one interesting item in his background that should have disqualified him from hearing the case: Until recently he was a board member of his local ACLU chapter. Judge Henderson granted the ACLU the temporary injunction against enforcement of the CCRI that they sought. After a show-trial of a hearing, Judge Henderson made permanent his order against the amendment.

This order was appealed to a three-judge appeals panel in California that took several unusual steps. First, the appellate judges used unusually harsh language in rebuking Judge Henderson for what they took to be his indefensible action. Next, they announced that they would take the unusual step -- not of reversing the case and sending it back to the lower judge, as is customary -- but rather that they were keeping the case to decide for themselves.

Then came this week's final ruling on the merits, in which the unanimous 3-0 ruling rejected all of the ACLU's arguments and upheld the CCRI. Game, set and match. The color- and gender-blind language of the CCRI is being vindicated, even as the Clinton administration, which opposed the CCRI and the voters of California, is rebuked. If subsequent court action upholds this ruling, the nation will have taken an historic step toward wrenching our culture away from the quota and preference police who, over the last 30 years, have done so much to set groups of Americans against each other.