Today a coalition of civil rights groups in California released a report entitled REACHING FOR THE DREAM: Profiles In Affirmative Action. The report outlines 31 codes and related programs threatened by proposed legislation. The report also profiles eight Californians whose lives were changed by these vital programs. The report will be sent to Assembly and Senate members by the American Civil Liberties Union's California legislative office.

Currently, AB 1700, sponsored by Assembly member Bernie Richter (R-Chico), and similar legislation by Quentin Kopp (Independent-San Francisco) would curtail or dismantle 31 state codes the Governor identified as violating Prop. 209. The codes generate outreach and recruitment programs in public education, employment and contracting that serve disadvantaged individuals. They do not exclude anyone based on race or gender.

None of the targeted codes and their programs mandate any form of preferences or quotas. As indicated in the report, "The targeted programs do not run afoul of Proposition 209 because they do not constitute forbidden `preferential treatment.' They are primarily outreach and recruitment programs. No business is guaranteed any particular contract. No individual receives a concrete benefit that is affirmatively denied anyone else. The programs simply open up the system to a wide range of qualified applicants and businesses." The codes/programs in question are outlined at the bottom of this release.

The report profiles eight individuals who benefitted from the programs in question. They include a former San Joaquin Valley farm worker who is now a top surgeon and a USC gynecology professor recently appointed to the Medical Board of California, a former welfare recipient and single mother from San Diego who entered California's EOP&S program and now teaches college and counsels students facing similar hardships, the daughter of a Mexican immigrant restaurant worker who enrolled at UC Berkeley with a full scholarship after attending the California Student Opportunity and Access Program, San Francisco's Chief of Police, and a Chino Hills Republican woman contractor who heads an environmental cleanup company.

In his introduction to the report, David B. Oppenheimer, Associate Professor of Law, Golden Gate University-San Francisco, says, "The programs described in this booklet help to remedy discrimination by reaching out to the excluded, giving them an opportunity to compete. These programs don't violate Proposition 209they give no preferences to anyone. But by bringing new faces to the table they give life-altering opportunities to thousands of Californians, permitting them to reach for dreams otherwise beyond their grasp."

The report includes brief sketches of the programs, ranging from the California Academic Partnership Program that has provided more than 130,000 K-12 students with mentoring, to the programs that provide opportunities for women and minority-owned businesses at the state and local level. The report's legal and policy discussion was compiled by some of the leading civil rights attorneys in the state from the coalition of organizations that produced the booklet.

The report was published with assistance from the van Loben Sels Foundation. The profiles were written by Peter Y. Sussman, prefaces are by Robert L. Harris, Vice President, PG&E and John T. Know, retired Speaker Pro Tem of the California Assembly (1960-1980).

Sunday night, March 15, the Eagle Board of the Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts of America, made up of three parents and three Boy Scout executives from the Council, voted unanimously to award Michael and William Randall their Eagle badges. While the decision is subject to final approval by the National Council of the Boy Scouts of America, whose decision is expected in four to six weeks, the ACLU knows of no instance in Scouting's history where the National Council has refused to confirm the award once the Eagle Board has approved it.

"This victory is long past due," said Taylor Flynn, an ACLU of Southern California attorney who represents the Randall twins. "It is unfortunate that the Boy Scouts have felt the need to dig in and thwart the inspiring work of two young men who are such a credit to their Boy Scout Council, their community and this nation."

The Orange County Council had initially refused to convene an Eagle Board to hear the boys' applications, and only did so upon order by the Superior Court of Orange County. On February 23, Superior Court Judge Richard O. Frazee ordered the Council to proceed with the application process. Michael and William have been active members in Scouting for the past nine years and were selected to be members of the equivalent of Scouting's honor society, the Order of the Arrow, to which less than five percent of all Scouts belong. They submitted their applications to be Eagle Scouts in November 1997, but the Orange County Council had refused to consider their applications.

The ACLU of Southern California argued before the California Supreme Court on January 5 in Randall vs. Boy Scouts of America, Orange County Council, challenging the Boy Scout policy excluding those who will not affirm a belief in God. Michael and William had been expelled as nine-year-old cub scouts when they refused to say the word "God" in taking the Boy Scout oath.

The suit charges religious discrimination based on the Unruh Civil Rights Act. On April 25, 1991, the Orange County Superior Court granted an injunction barring the Orange County Council from refusing to allow the Randall twins to participate in Scouting or from requiring them to use the word "God" in the oath.

After a lengthy trial, on May 7, 1992, the Superior Court ruled that the Orange County Council of the Boy Scouts is a business and is subject to the anti-discrimination protections of the Unruh Civil Rights Act, a decision affirmed by the Court of Appeal on February 28, 1994. The Council appealed that ruling to the California Supreme Court. A decision from the California Supreme Court is expected later this year.

In a case that has drawn national attention because of the multiplicity of issues it raises in surrogacy cases, a California Court of Appeal ruled today that a man and woman who contracted with a surrogate mother are the child's legal parents, even though the baby was born after the couple divorced.

The ACLU of Southern California had filed an amicus on behalf of the wife, Luanne Buzzanca, to ensure her legal status as the mother of the child, whom she has raised since birth and is now two years old.

The ACLU hailed the ruling as a victory for parents and children. "The court said it best," said ACLU/SC staff attorney Taylor Flynn. "The Buzzancas brought this child into the world. Mr. Buzzanca cannot claim that he is not responsible simply because technology made it possible for him to have a child using sperm and egg donation. Biological ties are not the exclusive definition of a family."

In overturning the Superior Court ruling from last September, the California Court of Appeal for the Fourth District said, in part, "The trial court then reached an extraordinary conclusion: Jaycee had no lawful parents. . . We disagree. Let us get right to the point: Jaycee would never have been born had not Luanne and John both agreed to have a fertilized egg implanted in a surrogate."

The Court of Appeal sent the case back to the Superior Court ordering the lower court to declare Luanne the lawful mother and giving her legal custody of her daughter. The Court also ordered the lower court to declare John Buzzanca the legal father and to establish appropriate permanent child support from him for his daughter.

The matter began when the Buzzancas engaged the services of a reproductive agency in 1994. The surrogate mother was implanted with a sperm and an egg from anonymous donors. The Buzzanca's are not the biological parents of their daughter. The couple divorced a month before their daughter was born in 1995.

Mr. Buzzanca sought to waive all responsibility for the child, and asked the Superior Court to declare that neither he nor his ex-wife were the legal parents of the baby girl. Last September Superior Court Judge Robert Monarch agreed with Mr. Buzzanca and ruled that the daughter, Jaycee, had no parents. Today's ruling overturns that decision.