Affirmative Action in California's State Civil Service: Who is Really Underrepresented and Why

The California state civil service has pursued policies of "affirmative action" for more than 25 years. In 1971, then Governor Ronald Reagan signed Executive Order (E.O.) No. R-34-71, which stated "justice demands that every citizen consciously adopt and accentuate a personal commitment to affirmative action which will make equal opportunity a reality." The legislature built on Reagan's E.O. in 1977, giving the State Personnel Board (SPB) responsibility for coordinating the state's affirmative action efforts and for assisting departments in setting hiring goals and timetables. In the 1980s, both Governors Jerry Brown and George Deukmejian issued executive orders reaffirming the state's commitment to affirmative action. Following suit, Governor Pete Wilson issued E.O. W-125-95 on June 1, 1995. Wilson, who had become the state's leading critic of affirmative action programs that granted preferences based on race and gender, prohibited state agencies and departments from granting preferences in their hiring processes and mandated that they use Relevant Labor Force (RLF) data (the ethnic composition of those qualified to do the job in the area in which an agency would be expected to recruit), rather than General Labor Force (GLF) data (the ethnic composition of the private sector workforce based on the latest U.S. Census) to set goals and timetables.

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