A California state appeals court recently overturned a 23 year old law that required community colleges to meet certain goal criteria when hiring female and minority employees.

This decision was brought down as a result of the passage of proposition 209, a measure passed by California voters in 1996 that prohibited the use of racial, ethnic, or gender preferences by colleges and other state agencies.

Ward Connerly, one of the architects of Proposition 209 hailed the latest court decision as “a great victory for the people of California.”

The overturned law required community colleges to “make additional efforts to recruit, employ, and promote women and members of racial and ethnic minority groups that were underrepresented on their payrolls.”

It also provided colleges with financial incentives for increasing diversity so that by 2005 the systems work force would “reflect proportionately the adult population of the state.”

After proposition 209 was passed, the community college system began to comply with the measure through regulatory actions. Colleges did not use hiring practices unless they were “justified by compelling evidence of past shortcomings in hiring female and minority employees, but the court was not satisfied.

The court ruled against diversity goals and timetables, saying they implicitly lead to use of illegal hiring preferences

Community college officials defended the courts accusation saying that minority students have benefited from minority role models.

“I’ll tell you as an educator, you have better learning when you have a diverse work force and a diverse learning environment.” said Thomas J. Nussbaum the California state Chancellor of Community colleges.

Jennifer Scott, a student at Cerritos college echoed Nussbaums statement. “It is cool when you have an opportunity to learn from a person who looks like you. It makes you believe you can also become successful.”

The California court of appeals believes the opposite. “From the presence of staffs of mixed races and ethnic groups,” the court said: “Lessons concerning democratic principles must include the fundamentals principles of law, embodied in our state and federal constitutions, that individuals should not be classified for different treatment based on their race.”

Although community colleges are prohibited from collecting and reporting employee data based on race, other state institutions are allowing to continue. The court said “the systems efforts to collect such data are entirely bound up and intermixed with the success of preferential hiring scheme.”

This decision will “almost certainly be appealed to the California Supreme Court,” said Nussbaum.