passed by the California Legislature in September<\/a>. Had AB 7 been passed, higher education institutions would have had the ability to give admission preference to individuals who have direct lineage to someone who experienced American slavery.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\nNewsom justified his veto by stating \u201cinstitutions already have the authority to determine whether to provide admissions preferences like this one, and accordingly, this bill is unnecessary.\u201d<\/p>\n
Opponents of AB 7 argue that the term \u201cdescendants of slavery\u201d is simply another way of identifying an applicant\u2019s race, as the majority of enslaved people in America were of African descent. Admission preferences based on race were banned by President Donald Trump\u2019s administration earlier this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Wenyuan Wu, the executive director of the antiaffirmative action organization Californians for Equal Rights Foundation, said in an email that she believes Newsom made the correct decision.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cLegislators and policymakers should devise meaningful solutions to help all students, including those that are descendants of slavery, succeed academically. They need to look at fixing pipeline and performance issues at the K-12 level, rather than divide students on racial lines,\u201d Wu said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Proponents saw AB 7 as a vehicle to expand opportunities for students who are \u201cdescendants of enslaved people\u201d in education. Organizations like the California Faculty Association expressed support for the bill, calling on members to encourage Newsom to sign AB 7.\u00a0<\/p>\n
UC Berkeley clinical law professor David Oppenheimer voiced his support for AB 7, characterizing it as a \u201cgood idea.\u201d He said he was sorry to see the bill be vetoed, but was glad to see the reasoning for the veto was that policies like the ones outlined in AB 7 were \u201calready permitted by law.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Oppenheimer said despite there being no legal impediments in the contents of AB 7, it could be a risky decision for a university to implement. He said he would assume the Trump administration would see preferential treatment to descendants of enslaved people as \u201cbad policy\u201d or \u201cillegal,\u201d which Oppenheimer said he disagrees with on both counts.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cInstitutions are cautious. And they\u2019re cautious when the stakes are high,\u201d Oppenheimer said. \u201cTo implement it, even if the governor had signed, would have looked like an invitation to a lawsuit, but to implement it after the Governor vetoes, it looks like even more of an invitation to be the defendant in a lawsuit.\u201d<\/p>\n
While AB 7 was vetoed, Oppenheimer noted there may be other ways for supporters to give similar preferential treatment to those descended from slaves, such as scholarships from philanthropic groups who may be more suited to withstand legal pushback than universities.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAdmission to UC is based on a comprehensive review of multiple measures of achievement and academic potential. The University remains committed to expanding access for all qualified students,\u201dsaid Omar Rodriguez, a UC Office of the President spokesperson, in an email.\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Gov. Gavin Newsom vetoed a bill that would give California colleges and universities the ability to provide preferential…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":9574,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[9271,9273,7625,9270,9272,7,1843,9275,9279,5037,143,145,144,9278,1695,149,9276,9277,9274],"class_list":["post-9573","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-oakland","tag-ab-7","tag-african","tag-america","tag-assembly-bill-7","tag-assemblymember-isaac-bryan","tag-california","tag-california-legislature","tag-californians-for-equal-rights-foundation","tag-david-oppenheimer","tag-gov-gavin-newsom","tag-oakland","tag-oakland-headlines","tag-oakland-news","tag-the-california-federation-of-teachers","tag-trump-administration","tag-uc-berkeley","tag-uc-student-association","tag-ucsa","tag-wenyuan-wu"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9573","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=9573"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/9573\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/9574"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=9573"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=9573"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=9573"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}