AsianWeek

Bill Lann Lee-Prince of Preferences
His interim record proves his biases

I usually ignore junk e-mails, consigning most to the circular file in cyberspace. But at times, the subject line persuades me to take a peek. Sometimes, I am rewarded with actually useful information. Other times, I quickly realize that I have just wasted a few seconds of my life.

Early last week, I wasted a few seconds of my life.

On Tuesday or Wednesday, I was cleaning out my e-mail box when I came across a lovely little press release from the yellow stripe of the civil rights establishment rainbow. It turns out that "our" representatives in Washington-the National Asian Pacific American Legal Consortium (NAPALC), the Japanese American Citizens League (JACL) and the Organization of Chinese Americans (OCA)-were in a huff about opposition to the renomination of Bill Lann Lee to the nation's highest civil rights post.

Karen Narasaki of NAPALC was "mystified," calling Lee's record as acting assistant attorney general for civil rights (which he holds without Senate approval) "fair and thoughtful" and labeling his opponents "ultraconservatives." Robert Sakaniwa of JACL and Daphne Kwok of OCA weighed in with similar sentiments.

Yet a cursory look at Bill Lann Lee's record for the past year demonstrates that he is uniquely qualified-as an advocate of racial quotas and preferences in hiring, contracting, voting and school admissions. As such, he is unfit to be the chief defender of civil rights for individual Americans.

One does not have to be ultra-conservative, anti-Asian or opposed to civil rights to oppose Lee. One merely has to oppose racial preferences and want to uphold the Constitution. The evidence against Lee-things he has actually said and done-compiled by groups like the Institute for Justice and the Center for Equal Opportunity, is well-documented and indisputable. It is a stark contrast from the race-baiting, name-calling, ad hominem attacks and threats of his defenders.

Let's look at some of the things Bill Lann Lee has been keeping busy with during the year he's headed up the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Justice. Under him, the department:

Continued challenging the implementation of California's Proposition 209, despite a unanimous Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals decision upholding the constitutionality of the voter-approved ban on most local and state-level racial preference programs.
Filed briefs in the Fifth and Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals defending the constitutionality of set-asides based on race and gender, in direct contravention of the Supreme Court decision in Adarand v. Pena. In an exhibition of self-serving language manipulation, Lee argued in Safeco Insurance Co. of America v. City of White House, Tenn., a Sixth Circuit case, that an Environmental Protection Agency requirement that contractors "assure that small, minority and women's businesses are used when possible as sources of supplies, construction and services ... does not require race-conscious decision-making" but is instead only "outreach."
Continually threatened state agencies and municipalities with investigation and enforcement actions to pressure them into entering consent decrees to adopt race and gender preferences in hiring. Even if such investigations and lawsuits are based on no more than statistical disparities, state agencies and municipalities often have settled to avoid the exorbitant cost of defending themselves in court and to escape the negative publicity.

In April 1998, however, the Civil Rights Division was fined an unprecedented $1.8 million for filing a lawsuit that the judge, a Carter appointee, found "frivolous, unreasonable and without foundation." Shortly thereafter, the division launched a similar suit against Garland, Texas. I guess it's OK to take illegal, hopeless risks if the money you're throwing away isn't your own.

Argued in the Second Circuit Court of Appeals that the Constitution is not violated when a test is deliberately redesigned so fewer whites and more blacks will pass.
Consistently defended or tried to mandate race-based voting-district gerrymandering.
Backed the use of racial preferences to create or maintain racial "diversity" in public schools in several cases before the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals.

Despite the widespread view among judges and legal scholars that the U.S. Supreme Court has time and again sought to curb race-preference programs, Lee himself stated in his first confirmation hearings in 1997 that he saw the cases as evidence of "an affirmation of affirmative action on a limited and measured basis." And while the former NAACP lawyer certainly has the right to his opinions, he should not have the right to use the bully pulpit of the Civil Rights Division to enforce or even preserve his personal ideology. When the government files, or even worse, gets assessed damages for filing frivolous lawsuits, that's money coming out of your pocket and mine.

The violence Lee has committed against the Constitution and the principle of equal rights for individuals is a matter of public record. To declare that Lee's detractors are motivated by race or that they have distorted his record is a gross exhibition of ethnic demagoguery and at best, willful ignorance. Even if he is a well-intentioned, good man, the policies and principles he seeks to preserve can only result in continued governmentally sanctioned discrimination against individuals and an increase in racial tension due to resentment against minorities.

That's because in Lee's world, it's OK if more-qualified applicants are rejected in favor of the minimally qualified, the low-bidder loses contracts to the higher one, and voting districts are gerrymandered into bizarre shapes nature never intended, as long as the outcome of any process yields the racial results he considers "fair."

Bottom line, folks: Lee has liked the racial preference programs of the past and he likes those programs now. He wants them to continue as long as there are statistical disparities in achievement in fields of human endeavor, which of course means forever. If you think racial preferences are necessary and good, if you think that government can require people to be treated differently due to skin color, if you think performance or admissions standards should be lowered in order to achieve a "correct racial mix," then Bill Lann Lee's the man for you.

Lee Cheng, 27, is a lawyer in private practice in Washington, D.C.

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