Thursday, August 7, 2003
Page 2
Asian American Bar Group Urges Supreme Court to Postpone Vote On Racial Privacy Initiative
By a MetNews Staff Writer
The Asian Pacific American Bar Association of Los Angeles County filed an amicus letter brief yesterday with the California Supreme Court urging it to postpone the scheduled Oct. 7 vote on the “Racial Privacy Initiative,” the group announced.
“This vote has wrongly been scheduled at least 56 days earlier than the time allowed under the California Constitution,” APABA-LA president-elect Teri Pham, principal author of the brief, said in a statement. “The California Constitution expressly requires at least 131 days from the time an initiative qualifies, to the day of the vote. Cutting this time in half will significantly impede the ability to educate and inform voters in the Asian American communities, and other similar multilingual communities about the RPI.”
The group is also opposed to the initiative in substance. The initiative would prohibit data collection on race, ethnicity and national origin in the guise of information privacy, but in practice it would be devastating to health and safety programs, educational programs, and civil rights enforcement, the group contends.
A petition challenging the scheduling of the initiative has been filed in the state Supreme Court by attorney Jon Eisenberg. The case is Eisenberg v. Shelley.
Copyright 2003, Metropolitan News Company