SACRAMENTO, CA -- Although opponents of race and gender preferences have been celebrating the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals' decision upholding the constitutionality of Proposition 209, several developments last week demonstrate that anti-preference forces cannot afford to rest on their laurels.

First, federal District Judge William Orrick rejected a legal petition by Chinese American parents requesting the elimination of race-based admissions for San Francisco's public schools. Judge Orrick was the judge who had signed the original 1983 order requiring the desegregation of the San Francisco Unified School District. Under that consent decree, San Francisco's magnet schools, such as high-performing Lowell High School, cannot have more than 40 percent of students from any one ethnic group.

A perverse effect of the decree: at Lowell, Chinese American students in 1994 had to score 61 on the entrance exam (out of 69 points) to be admitted, while whites and other Asians needed a 59, and blacks and Hispanics needed only a 53.

The school system's reasoning for raising the bar on Chinese Americans: a single, color-blind, merit-based entrance standard for all students would result in too many Chinese American students gaining entrance (Chinese American applicants as a whole have extremely high GPAs and test scores) and thus violating the court's ethnicity cap. Raising the bar, however, not only denies many Chinese American students the quality instruction they've earned, it also violates their constitutional equal protection rights. Hence, the lawsuit brought by the Chinese American parents.

In rejecting the Chinese American parents' legal petition, Judge Orrick blandly opined that the goals of the original desegregation order had not been met. As for the constitutional rights of the Chinese American students, Orrick, in effect, said, "tough beans." In the wake of Orrick's ruling, Amy Chang, of the Asian American Legal Foundation, said that supporters of race preferences who opposed the Chinese American parents "put themselves in the same position as George Wallace in the early 1960s -- they are saying quotas then, quotas now, and quotas forever."

In another development on the preference front, the top bureaucratic brass at UC campuses have circled the wagons to save one of the most indefensible of all preference practices: the setting aside of admission spots for the children of wealthy donors. Ward Connerly and student regent Jess Bravin will introduce a resolution this week at the UC Board of Regents meeting to eliminate this crass favoritism. Outgoing UC Berkeley chancellor Chang-Lin Tien has decried the proposed elimination, saying that such a ban would wreak havoc on Berkeley's fundraising. The regents, according to Tien, should let administrators use their "judgment." In a delicious retort to this self-interested line of unreason, Ward Connerly observed, "If that's what we want to do, then we should take five or ten slots and say they will go to the highest bidder." Bingo.

As these developments demonstrate, the fight against preferences is not over. The enemy may be down, but he's not out. Our offensive must therefore continue.

-Lance T. Izumi