Florida Identifies Dozens Of Progams That Illegally Mandate Racial Preferences

Florida will no longer recognize or defend dozens of affirmative action programs engrained in state law, Florida Attorney General James Uthmeier said Monday in a legal opinion first obtained by The Daily Wire.

These programs violate both the Florida and United States constitutions, Uthmeier said, by setting aside opportunities for non-white people.

“Racial discrimination is wrong. It is also unconstitutional. Yet Florida maintains several laws on its books that promote and require discrimination on its face,” Uthmeier wrote. “Any laws requiring race-based state action are presumptively unconstitutional under the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause” and the Florida Constitution.”

Included in an appendix to the legal opinion were state programs that illegally gave preferences based on race, Uthmeier said. That includes programs that mandated doctor’s offices to hire and retain minority doctors and another that requires the state’s Commerce Department to promote minority businesses.

One major example cited in the opinion is a law that mandates state agencies to implement “programs of affirmative and positive action” and requires the heads of executive agencies to “develop and implement an affirmative action plan.”

Agencies were also required to post demographic information about how many non-white people they had hired to indicate compliance with affirmative action policies.

“These laws do not further a compelling governmental interest because none of these laws identifies any of the limited, recognized constitutional justifications for race-based classifications — namely, remedying specific instances of past discrimination or avoiding imminent and serious risks to human safety,” the Republican attorney general wrote. “These laws further fail strict scrutiny because none are limited in duration and because they preclude race-neutral alternatives.”

Another implicated program requires a specific number of construction, architectural, commodity, and contractual services be awarded to blacks, Hispanics, Asians, and women.

“Any Florida law that seeks to compel race-based discriminatory provisions through government contracting is unconstitutional,” Uthmeier said.

Uthmeier also pointed to racial quotas implemented for certain boards, councils, and similar entities.

“My office, therefore, will not defend or enforce any of these discriminatory provisions,” he wrote in the opinion.

Throughout the opinion, Uthmeier pointed to the recent Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard that struck down the ability of colleges to admit students based on race. That ruling has proved monumental for challenges nationwide to racial preferences embedded at the federal and state level.