Well, not exactly, but close enough for Drudge. The Daily Bruin reports (hat tip: John Rosenberg) that Ass. Bill 2387, authored by liberal firebrand Marco Firebaugh, recently passed the as-yet-unrecalled Califorina Assembly by a 45-30 margin, with no debate. It remains to be seen how this bill will fare in the equally unrecalled Senate, or whether our allegedly Republican governor will sign it into “law.”

Needless to say, this bill is a blatant violation of Proposition 209, which was codified at Article I, Section 31 of the Calfornia Constitution. Subsection (a) of that provision reads:

The State shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.

Firebaugh’s bill attempts to get around this by arguing that Prop 209 allows race to be “considered,” as long as no “preferences” are actually given. For example, it would add a new Section 66205(c)(1) of the Education Code, to provide in part that:

Pursuant to subdivision (b), the University of California and the California State University may consider culture, race, gender, ethnicity, national origin, geographic origin, and household income, along with other relevant factors, in undergraduate and graduate admissions, so long as no preference is given.

Got that? In other words, if this turkey passes, universities will be free to “consider” race all they want, as long as that consideration doesn’t actually influence anything. As last year’s racial privacy bill failed, that’s basically the law now. Thus, if this were all the Firebaugh bill did, I’d write the bill off as a silly, pointless exercise. Unfortunately, subsection (c)(1) goes on to state a much broader agenda:

It is the intent of the Legislature that this provision be implemented to the maximum extent permitted by the decision of the United States Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) 539 U.S. 306, and in conformity with Section 31 of Article I of the California Constitution.

In other words, don’t award any preferences, but do award preferences to the extent allowed under Grutter v. Bollinger, which permits under the federal Constitution the very reverse discrimination that Proposition 209 was intended to prohibit under California’s.