Opinion: Prop 1 will greenlight anti-Asian discrimination in New York

Tomorrow, New Yorkers will be asked to vote on Prop 1, the state Equal Rights Amendment. New Yorkers for Equal Rights, the Democrat-aligned group behind the measure, claims that the purpose of the amendment is to codify a right to abortion in the state constitution.

But to state the obvious, abortion is not under threat in liberal New York. And Prop 1 does not even include the word “abortion” anywhere in it.

The real purpose of New York’s Equal Rights Amendment is, among other progressive pipe dreams, to legalize “reverse discrimination” – that is, discrimination against certain racial groups in an effort to help others. In particular, Paragraph B of the amendment states: “Nothing in this section shall invalidate or prevent the adoption of any law, regulation, program, or practice designed to prevent or dismantle discrimination on the basis of a characteristic listed in this section.” 

The last time that New York officials tried to “dismantle discrimination,” Asian American kids were harmed. 

In June 2018, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio and former schools chancellor Richard Carranza announced a plan to change the city’s Discovery Program, which helps low-income students gain greater access to Gotham’s specialized high schools. Like many other New York progressives, de Blasio and Carranza took issue with the high number of Asian students and low number of Black and Latino students enrolled in these schools, where admission is determined by a student’s score on the Specialized High School Admissions Test, or SHSAT. “I just don’t buy into the narrative that any one ethnic group owns admission to these schools,” Carranza said at the time.

To qualify for admission to a specialized high school under Discovery before 2018, a student had to get a certain score on the SHSAT, be certified by her middle school as disadvantaged and having high potential and complete a summer preparatory program. Under the new plan, only students attending middle schools with an Economic Need Index of 60% or higher would be eligible.

Economic Need calculations for 2018 predicted that students attending 11 of the 24 majority-Asian middle schools in New York City would lose eligibility under the new program, compared to just 20 of the 191 majority-Black schools and nine of the 243 majority-Latino schools. The de Blasio-Carranza Discovery Program, which has continued under Mayor Eric Adams, penalizes Asian American kids in order to help those who are black and Latino. The Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York sued city officials over the program in 2018, arguing that it “operates to limit Discovery not to poor students, but to poor students at particular schools.”

Last month, following almost seven years of litigation, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in favor of the Chinese American Citizens Alliance of Greater New York. In a unanimous decision, the Second Circuit reversed the district court’s grant of summary judgment in favor of New York City and concluded that the de Blasio-Carranza Discovery Program had a discriminatory effect on Asian American students. “Here it is undisputed that economically disadvantaged Asian-American students from certain middle schools, who would have been eligible for admission to the (specialized high schools) under the Discovery Program, were rendered ineligible for admission under the new policy because the Economic Need Index at their middle school was too high,” wrote Circuit Judge Joseph Bianco.

Prop 1 remains dangerous even in light of the Second Circuit’s ruling. If city officials get more ingenious at crafting policies that discriminate against certain racial groups in order to help others, the amendment will not protect those harmed, despite its claim to further “equal rights.” Rather, if this ballot measure were to pass next week, discrimination against Asian Americans and any other racially unfavored group would be enshrined in New York’s constitution. All New Yorkers who care about equal rights in the true sense of the term should vote “no” on Prop 1.