Hard and Soft Quotas
Debating preferences in the Granite State.

Mr. Clegg is general counsel at the Center for Equal Opportunity.
February 27, 2002 9:15 a.m.

tate representative Michael Harrington, an engineer representing Strafford County, has introduced important legislation in New Hampshire this month. His bill, HB 1304, will clarify and strengthen the Granite State's ban on preferences based on (among other things) race and ethnicity.

New Hampshire law already makes it illegal for individuals to be "in any way favored or discriminated against" because of their race, but there are those willfully blind to this ban. The University of New Hampshire, for instance, entered into an agreement with the Black Student Union there on November 10, 1998, setting out a series of goals including: adding 50 black students each year until a target of 300 students is reached in 2004; having a total of ten black tenure-track faculty by 2003; and hiring no fewer than two black visiting scholars per year through 2003. "Goals" like these inevitably become quotas, and will certainly result in some candidates being either "favored or discriminated against" because of race.

Accordingly, HB 1304 spells out that "preferential treatment or discrimination… shall include but is not limited to the use of any quotas, goals, guidelines, or timetables that permit, encourage, or require preferential treatment or discrimination based on race…" It covers employment in the state civil service; faculty and student admissions in the state college and university system (including regional community-technical colleges); and hiring and promotion on the state's Postsecondary Education Commission.

This week, the members of the New Hampshire house will be receiving a letter from a list of names that amounts to a national Who's Who in the fight against racial and ethnic preferences: Clint Bolick, Linda Chavez, Ward Connerly, Tom Jipping, Ed Meese, and Grover Norquist. The letter spells out the importance of nondiscrimination generally and the merits of HB 1304 in particular.

The only argument being offered by opponents of the bill is that the federal government requires the use of goals in order to get federal money. Not only is this an insult to Yankee independence, but it's an unpersuasive argument for several other reasons as well. In the first place, HB 1304 says explicitly that nothing in its provisions prohibits "actions necessary to establishing or maintaining eligibility for any federal program where ineligibility would result in a loss of federal funds to the state." Second, most federal programs do not require the use of quotas and goals. And, third, even those that do explicitly ban the use of preferential treatment to meet them. California and Washington have passed ballot initiatives banning the use of preferences, and there has been no sudden ineligibility for federal funding there.

The fact is that there is no reason to oppose HB 1304 — unless you favor the use of preferences based on skin color and ancestry. There are such people in the United States, and even in New Hampshire, but they are out of step with the overwhelming majority of Americans.

The bill is likely to come to a vote in the New Hampshire house of representatives on March 6 or 7. This body — the third-largest legislature in the English-speaking world, behind only the U.S. Congress and British Parliament — can do itself proud by refusing to rank New Hampshirites according to the color of their skin or the country of their ancestors.