Affirmative action is back in the headlines. Recently, 2000 young people held a protest rally on the U. C. Berkeley Campus demanding the University resume its affirmative action programs, extend minority outreach programs and hire more women faculty. The rally was supported by over 400 professors across the UC System and numerous academic organizations. UC Regent Bill Bagley of San Francisco is leading the charge to reverse the July, 1995 ban on affirmative action.

Meanwhile, there is a raging battle in the courts with judges ruling against each other over affirmative action. In December, 2000 U. S. District Court Judge Patrick Duggan ruled that the University of Michigan could give extra points for African American, Hispanic and Native American applicants for undergraduate admissions, just as extra points are given for children of alumni, scholarship athletes and other non-academic criteria. However, on March 27, 2001 U. S. District Court Judge Bernard Friedman ruled that the University of Michigan's admission policy at the Law School to be unconstitutional. This latest ruling followed a ruling by the U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals that the University of Washington Law School's use of race in admissions decisions was legal. To resolve these conflicts, the next stop will most likely be the Supreme Court where affirmative action's "Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse,"ultra conservatives" Thomas (who is Black), Scalia, Rehnquist, and Kennedy, have already reeked their scourge on affirmative action.

On the legislative side, a bill has been introduced in Congress to prohibit affirmative action in admissions for any college that receives federal funding. This would end affirmative action in every college. Affirmative action would be illegal even if it were to remedy past or present discrimination. "The bill may pass congress, but it won't pass muster with the legal system or the constitution," states Orin Seldstrom, a Civil Rights Attorney with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights in San Francisco.

The Supreme Court has already agreed to rule on the 10% goal of the U. S. Transportation Department. And, guess who will be defending affirmative action? U. S. Attorney General John Ashcroft as head of the Justice Department will provide the defense. Ashcroft, as a Senator in 1998, was the leader of efforts to kill affirmative action in the Transportation bill. "This is like having the fox watch over the chicken coup," states Ted Smith, a Black Caltrans Contractor in Richmond, CA. "This may well be the death knell of affirmative action," he concluded.