New York, NY, October 7, 2003—Today National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial urged Californians to turn out to the polls and reject Proposition 54-the California ballot initiative prohibiting identification of individuals by race, ethnicity, color or nation of origin. Morial said that passage of the initiative would have a debilitating effect on the lives of millions of African Americans, Hispanics and Asians in the nation\'s most diverse state by limiting school accountability, impacting health care resources and undermining criminal justice reform.

• In education, Proposition 54 would undermine California\\\'s ability to collect and analyze racial identification data in the federal government\\\'s No Child Left Behind Act. No Child Left Behind mandates school systems to collect data by race to ensure that all children are receiving a quality education in each school district. The initiative would prohibit schools from collecting data on teacher qualification and class size that often differ in minority and non-minority districts and also impact affect student achievement rates
• In criminal justice, Proposition 54 would prevent California\\\'s compliance with the federal Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention Act that asks, but does not mandate, states to identify the extent to which disproportionate minority confinement exists and create strategies to change it.
• In healthcare, about 30 percent of Hispanic and 20 percent of black Americans lack regular access to health care compared with less than 16 percent of whites. Proposition 54 would severely undermine healthcare funding for the prevention and treatment of certain diseases that disproportionately impact African Americans and Latinos

"We are bolstered by recent indications that Proposition 54 will be defeated," Morial said, "however, a high turnout is still critical to the defeat of this misguided and regressive initiative".

"The National Urban League and the California Association of Urban League Executives (CAULE), join with the Leadership Conference on Civil Rights, the N.A.A.C.P, the Rainbow/Push Coalition and local African-American and Latino community leaders to urge Californians to turn out to the polls and resoundingly reject 54."

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