Is ACA 7 a reparations bill that makes some students take on more debt?
CA voters already said no to racial preferences, but state legislators keep pushing for discrimination, says California Globe’s Katie Grimes. A reparations program under the new ACA 7 would give students of the same financial need different aid packages: free money for some, student debt for the rest. Why do the people’s representatives keep ignoring the will of the people?
Gail Heriot, a Professor of Law at the University of San Diego and a commissioner on the United States Commission on Civil Rights, sent a letter to a number of Senators explaining the bill’s implications:
…The differences were often more in the package than in the amounts. An African American student would be given grants, while a student of any other race would be saddled with student loans, despite having equal (or even greater) financial need. The difference between receiving grants and receiving loans is huge. If ACA7 passes, Proposition 209 will no longer prohibit such discrimination. Indeed, this is overwhelmingly likely to be the most important reason its supporters are putting it forth.
“Most people view such a financial aid policy as repugnant,” Professor Heriot said. “They believe that need should be the overwhelming factor in awarding financial aid.”
If that is not repugnant enough, Prof. Heriot warns that Assemblyman Corey Jackson and his fellows “reparations” activists want to use ACA 7 to offer free tuition in California’s universities to African American students as reparations compensation, and/or as compensation for past discrimination, even though California was not a slave state, as the Globe continues to remind readers and voters. Gov. Newsom’s Reparations Task Force even formally recommended that the state legislature repeal Proposition 209.
Heriot says, “If Jackson’s plan becomes common knowledge while ACA7 is on the ballot, I don’t see how ACA7 could even do as well as the doomed Proposition 16. More voters will be alienated, perhaps even enough to cause the Democratic Party to lose its super-majority in one or both chambers of the Legislature.”
She says she does not believe ACA 7 would be passed by voters, but if it does pass, she doesn’t think these discriminatory practices will ever be upheld in court since the Supreme Court decided the 2020 Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College.
Read the whole thing here.
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