MoCRI Language Faces Legal Challenge
All is not well with the Missouri Civil Rights Initiative (MoCRI).
I mentioned earlier this week that Secretary of State Robin Carnahan approved the proposed initiative that would ban the state from discriminating against and preferring people on the basis of race and sex. But the language contains the same wording as a 2008 effort that resulted in a protracted lawsuit, which challenged the wording as “insufficient, unfair, and argumentative.”
The Carnahan-approved language faces a legal challenge. Supporters of the initiative have filed suit yet again to fight for new ballot language.
“We recommended the secretary of state adopt ballot language rewritten by the court in 2008,” said MoCRI director Tim Asher. “Incredibly, Carnahan’s office chose instead to resubmit the exact language the court previously found to be ‘insufficient and unfair’…It is completely irresponsible of the secretary of state to waste public money defending an action that has already been struck down by the court. If the secretary of state is to act impartially- as required by state statute- why would she insist on resubmitting language already determined to be inadequate?”
In addition to this lawsuit, the ACLU has challenged the initiative, asserting that it “violates the Missouri Constitution by seeking to trick and defraud Missouri voters in attempting to ban an array of equal opportunity programs.”
That’s a tortured twisting of MoCRI, to say the least. The initiative seeks to prevent Missouri from preferring one race over another. “Equal opportunity,” as used by government agencies, is a mask for so-called affirmative action. The government is trying to rig the process to ensure equal outcomes, not equal opportunity.
