Time: Sat Aug 16 03:37:18 1997
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Date: Fri, 15 Aug 1997 20:15:38 -0700
To: (Recipient list suppressed)
From: Paul Andrew Mitchell [address in tool bar]
Subject: SLS: Freedom of Speech? Not according to UCLA! (fwd)
<snip>
>
>Lawsuit Accuses UCLA of
>Suppressing Free Speech
>In the Name of Affirmative Action
>
>Washington, D.C. - UCLA student Alvaro Cardona found that free speech ends
>where political correctness and a university's allegiance to race-based
>affirmative action begin.
>
>An experienced and gifted tutor, Cardona applied for a tutoring position
>with the university's Academic Advancement Program (AAP), self-touted as
>the nation's largest undergraduate affirmative action program. When
>Cardona was interviewed for the post, he was not asked about his experience
>as a tutor. Instead, was grilled about his beliefs on affirmative action
>and was encouraged to show his allegiance to race-based preference
>programs-beliefs and policies to which he does not wholeheartedly
>subscribe. Cardona refused.
>
>In early December 1995, the AAP supervisor called Cardona to tell him he
>didn't get the job. When Cardona asked for her reasons, she told him that
>he was not the proper person to handle AAP students because he did not
>wholeheartedly embrace affirmative action. She was also concerned that as
>a tutor, Al would stress academics "too much," when in fact it comprised
>only 50 per cent of the job. The remainder required "validation" of
>students' feelings, and Al's responses to her questions about affirmative
>action and discrimination suggested he would not provide enough validation.
>Today, August 6, 1997, Cardona is filing suit in U.S. District Court for
>the Central District of California against the University of California,
>Los Angeles. The lawsuit asks the court to declare that the university's
>Academic Advancement Program (AAP) violated the First Amendment to the U.S.
>Constitution and Article I, Section 2 of the California Constitution by
>attempting to silence dissenting opinions by refusing to hire tutors who
>would not swear unyielding loyalty to race-based affirmative action.
>"It should come as no surprise that policies based on morally questionable
>premises require the suppression of speech antithetical to them if they are
>to survive," said Donna Matias, staff attorney with the Washington,
>D.C.-based Institute for Justice (www.ij.org), which filed suit on
>Cardona's behalf. "UCLA used McCarthyite tactics to defend racial and
>ethnic preference programs that are living on borrowed time."
>
>Alvaro Cardona is a Guatemalan immigrant who moved to South Central Los
>Angeles as a child. Although an avid reader and aspiring writer, Cardona
>never finished high school but instead dropped out of school to support his
>family. Later he earned his GED, attended community college and ultimately
>UCLA. During his two years at a community college, Cardona tutored several
>hundred students, most of whom were immigrants from a variety of countries.
> In the fall of 1995, he enrolled in UCLA's undergraduate history program
>and began doing miscellaneous computer work for the AAP. In November 1995
>Cardona's supervisor, the director of the AAP Tutorial Program, encouraged
>him to apply for an AAP tutoring job.
>
>Upon his rejection, Cardona initially took his grievance to the university
>legal services office, which told him his was not an isolated incident.
> Because they thought he had a strong First Amendment case, legal services
>encouraged him to contact the ACLU of Southern California. Four months
>later, in September 1996, the ACLU rejected Al's case due to "severely
>limited" resources.
>
>It was surely no coincidence that at the same time the ACLU of Southern
>California considered and rejected Cardona's case, it was gearing up for
>its lawsuit challenging the California Civil Rights Initiative (CCRI).
> Although the law was not passed until November 1996, anti-CCRI forces
>began preparing for the likelihood that Californians would vote to
>eliminate race and gender preferences in public education, employment, and
>contracting. Among the supporters of the ACLU's litigation from the outset
>were Charles Young, then Chancellor of UCLA, and Adolfo Bermeo, Director of
>UCLA's AAP and one of the defendants in this lawsuit. When the anti-CCRI
>lawsuit was filed, both Young and Bermeo submitted affidavits attesting to
>the continuing need for race and gender preferences at UCLA.
>
>To add another twist to this story, in July 1995, the University of
>California Regents, the state body authorized to administer the UC system,
>voted to eliminate race and gender preferences-the very kind of affirmative
>action programs Cardona was urged to support as a condition of employment.
>Al Cardona was being asked to endorse a program that the Regents would
>later deem inappropriate and that California voters rendered unlawful.
>Although this case is a classic free speech case, it also demonstrates the
>inevitable constraints on freedom that flow from policies that classify
>people on the basis of race and ethnicity. As those policies come under
>attack, their defenders rely not on persuasion, but on suppression,
>ultimately harming not only the very people whose interests the policies
>purportedly serve, but anyone who dares question or criticize the policies.
>
>"Intertwined in an individual's right to speak freely is the right to
>refrain from speaking, that is, to not be forced to swear an oath of
>loyalty to a particular political issue or affiliation," said Chip Mellor,
>president of the Institute for Justice. "The Supreme Court has held that
>loyalty oaths in exchange for a benefit such as employment do not pass
>constitutional muster."
>
>The Institute for Justice (www.ij.org) advances a rule of law under which
>individuals control their destinies as free and responsible members of
>society. Through strategic litigation, training, and outreach, the
>Institute secures greater protection for individual liberty, challenges the
>scope and ideology of the Regulatory Welfare State, and illustrates and
>extends the benefits of freedom to those whose full enjoyment of liberty is
>denied by government. The Institute was founded in September 1991 by
>Mellor and Clint Bolick.
>
> # # #
========================================================================
Paul Andrew Mitchell : Counselor at Law, federal witness
B.A., Political Science, UCLA; M.S., Public Administration, U.C. Irvine
tel: (520) 320-1514: machine; fax: (520) 320-1256: 24-hour/day-night
email: [address in tool bar] : using Eudora Pro 3.0.3 on 586 CPU
website: http://www.supremelaw.com : visit the Supreme Law Library now
ship to: c/o 2509 N. Campbell, #1776 : this is free speech, at its best
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Postal Zone 85719/tdc : USPS delays first class w/o this
As agents of the Most High, we came here to establish justice. We shall
not leave, until our mission is accomplished and justice reigns eternal.
========================================================================
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