ASSEMBLY, No. 2533
STATE OF NEW JERSEY
INTRODUCED DECEMBER 5, 1996
By Assemblymen CARROLL, O’TOOLE, Garrett, Assemblywoman Crecco, Assemblymen Bucco, Gregg and Weingarten
An Act concerning the awarding of preferences for employment and other benefits based upon certain characteristics and supplementing Title 10 of the Revised Statutes.
Be It Enacted by the Senate and General Assembly of the State of New Jersey:
1. The Legislature finds and declares that all officially sanctioned discrimination based upon characteristics such as race, religion, ethnicity, and national origin is contrary to the basic tenets of American society. Individual merit, not membership in a favored or disfavored group, is the only reasonable basis for differentiation between people. It is fundamentally unjust for any individual to suffer an officially mandated burden, or to obtain an unjustified and unmerited benefit, solely on the basis of one's membership in an ethnic or racial class. Quotas, goals, set-asides, preferences, or other methods for taking irrational and irrelevant considerations like race or ethnicity into account are contrary to basic notions of fairness, justice and fair play.
2. Neither any public entity of the State of New Jersey nor any entity receiving public funds shall use race, ethnicity, sex, color, or national origin as a basis for awarding any preferences to an applicant for employment, for promotion, for admission to school, or for any other benefit.
3. Any private entity which is authorized or directed, by a law enacted prior to the effective date of this act, to grant any preference on the basis of race, sex, ethnicity or national origin shall cease to grant such preference as of that effective date.
4. Nothing in this act shall be construed as prohibiting classifications based on sex which are reasonably necessary to the normal operation of the State's system of public employment or public education.
5. Any provision of this act held invalid shall be severable from the remaining portions of this act.
6. This act shall take effect immediately.
STATEMENT
This bill restates the fundamental proposition of American civil life that all persons are created equal and that equality of opportunity under the law is guaranteed to all. This basic, fundamental underpinning of the American philosophy is applied to the states through the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution, which, in part, states, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges and immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." Furthermore, this objective belief is part of the New Jersey State Constitution in Article I, paragraph 5, which states, "No person shall be denied the enjoyment of any civil or military right, nor be discriminated against in the exercise of any civil or military right, nor be segregated in the militia or in the public schools, because of religious principles, race, color, ancestry or national origin." These basic statements of principle contained within the constitutions of the United States and the State of New Jersey stand for the fundamental precept of American law and society that the State should and must not foster discrimination based upon one's race, color, gender or creed.
Recent United States Supreme Court decisions, such as Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Pena, 115 S.Ct. 2097 (1995) and Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co., 488 U.S.469 (1989), among others, have stated that all racial classifications, imposed by whatever federal, state, or local government actor, must be analyzed with the strictest of scrutiny. The basic principle espoused by the Supreme Court of the United States in these cases is that the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments to the United States Constitution protect persons, not groups, and the Supreme Court has called upon society and the states to treat citizens as individuals, not as components of a class based on race, religion, sex or national origin.
State-imposed preferences, quotas, set-asides and other mechanisms based on class status within society and not upon individual merit, achievement and responsibility erode and do violence to objective notions of justice and fair play. Individual ability and merit should be the basis for all State-sponsored personnel decisions; likewise, value of the goods or services rendered should be the basis of all State-sponsored contractual decisions.
While the State should retain the power to institute narrowly tailored race-based action to further compelling State interests in the face of persistent and unyielding discrimination, the State of New Jersey has the duty to promote equal opportunity and fairness regardless of race, gender, sexual preference, age, religious belief or physical condition. This bill is not intended in any way to create any favored class, rather it is intended to eliminate the hodgepodge of preferences based upon irrational characteristics which erode the fundamental American notion of equality under the law.
Prohibits public and certain private affirmative action programs based upon race, ethnicity, sex, color or national origin.