San Diego County Bar Association Adopts Resolution
Opposing Racial Privacy Initiative

SAN DIEGO, CA, March 22, 2002 -- The county’s oldest and largest legal association has come out against an initiative that, if approved, would prohibit the collection of race and ethnicity based statistics by State, city and county agencies, the Attorney General’s Office, and by the public university system in California. Forces behind the initiative are attempting to qualify it for the November 2002 ballot by garnering approximately 700,000 signatures by April 19.

Passage of the so-called “Racial Privacy Initiative” (RPI) would, in effect, make it impossible to enforce California laws against racial and ethnic discrimination, effectively rolling back the State’s efforts toward racial equality to the pre-civil rights era and undoing three decades of progress.

“ The San Diego County Bar Association is sending a clear message with adoption of the resolution,” said Bar President Monty A. McIntyre. "The Bar, and the other law-related associations which also support this resolution, believe it is critical to educate the public about the negative consequences of the initiative."

The resolution, which discourages Californians from signing petitions that would put the RPI on the ballot in November, was approved by unanimous vote of the Association’s 16-member Board on March 19. The case against the RPI, according to McIntyre, is very persuasive. “The Board considered carefully first the issue of purview and then the initiative itself. Because the proposed initiative would undermine efforts to track progress, or lack of progress, in providing equal opportunity for all citizens, the Board felt it was important to support the resolution and oppose the initiative.”

In addition to the San Diego County Bar Association, the resolution is cosponsored by seven San Diego lawrelated organizations including the Earl B. Gilliam Bar Association, Foothills Bar Association, Lawyers Club of San Diego, Pan Asian Lawyers of San Diego, Pilipino-American Lawyers of San Diego, La Raza Lawyers Association of San Diego, and the Tom Homann Law Association.

In the 2000 U.S. Census, California was found to be 47 percent white, 32 percent Hispanic, 11 percent Asian, 7 percent African American and 1 percent Native American. Cited within the resolution, however, are statistics that point to the continued under-representation of minorities in the state’s justice system, including:

• A California Judicial Council Advisory Committee report that found superior court judges in the State were 89 percent white, 4.3 percent Hispanic, 4 percent African American, and 2 percent Asian;
  
• A California Bar Journal report that the state’s lawyers are 83 percent white, 6 percent Asian, 3.7 percent Hispanic, and 2.4 percent African American;
  
• As of March 2000, of the approximately 14,000 law students in California law schools, 10,000 (71 percent) were white.

" Should the initiative qualify for the November ballot and be approved, these statistics could not be collected," McIntyre said. "The problems would not disappear. Only our ability to gauge progress would."
The 7,500 member San Diego County Bar Association was founded in 1899 and is headquartered in downtown San Diego at 1333 Seventh Avenue.