Announcer lead: Time for Perspectives. Lance Izumi says that recent court decisions misinterpret the intent of Proposition 209.

What is the only thing harder than passing a landmark ballot initiative in California? Answer: Implementing it. Just look at the legal travails that have hampered the implementation of Proposition 209. Voters overwhelmingly approved the anti-race-and-gender-preference initiative and federal judges upheld it as constitutional. But state judges have been handing down opinions that block the law's full application.

Take, for example, a recent ruling by Sacramento Superior Court Judge Lloyd Connelly, a former Democratic assemblyman. According to Connelly, state personnel laws that establish goals and timetables for hiring and promoting minorities and women do not violate Prop. 209 because they aren't quotas and supposedly don't involve preferential treatment.

That's not, however, the view of the federal Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In a 1997 ruling in a California case, the Ninth Circuit found that race- and gender-based goals are racial classifications just like quotas and are therefore almost always unlawful. Yet Judge Connelly ignored the Ninth Circuit's ruling.

Even more disturbing, though, is the fact that Judge Connelly's decision ignored the clear intent of voters when they approved Prop. 209. Connelly acknowledged that the ballot pamphlet sent to voters is a key way of determining voters' intent. The judge, however, then ignored the fact that the ballot pamphlet cited goals and timetables to hire minorities and women for state government jobs as an example of a preference program. Voters reading the ballot pamphlet would have surely assumed that 209 would get rid of such programs. With a thumb in the eye to Joe Sixpack, however, Connelly concluded that goals and timetables are not subject to "the prohibitions of Proposition 209."

The bottom line is that government employment goals and timetables based on race and gender discriminate against those who are not members of government-favored groups. Such discrimination is clearly not allowed under Prop. 209. Hopefully the state appellate court judges reviewing Judge Connelly's decision will recognize that basic fact.

With a perspective, I'm Lance Izumi.