A challenge to a misleading, far-reaching anti-equal opportunity measure in Colorado. The petition considered in this case is one of a series of anti-affirmative action initiatives being forwarded in 5 states for the fall of 2008, and is deceptively billed by its sponsors as a ban on "discrimination" and "preferences."
The petition sponsored by the so-called Colorado Civil Rights Initiative
(CO-CRI) is one of a series of anti-affirmative action measures being
forwarded by Ward
Connerly and the American Civil Rights Institute as part of a national
movement to roll back equal opportunity.
Concerned
that Colorado voters would be deceived by the
initiative’s misleading language and forced to consider numerous different
issues in a single measure, advocates filed a legal challenge to the petition in
July of 2007. The challenge emphasized the initiative’s prejudicial and
misleading use of the phrase “preferential treatment” as a means to induce
voters to dismantle a broad range of equal opportunity programs. A divided
Supreme Court upheld the CO-CRI’s misleading ballot language in this past
September, and the CO-CRI began to gather signatures to get its petition on the
ballot immediately thereafter. On March 2008, the CO-CRI submitted its signatures to the office of the Secretary of State, which certified the measure. The initiative is slated to appear on the November ballot as Amendment 46.
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