ATLANTA: The Southeastern Legal Foundation today unveiled a Special Report on Race-Neutral Alternatives for the City of Atlanta, fulfilling its promise to bring solutions to the discussion table. The Special Report contains a synopsis of successful race-neutral public contracting programs currently used by cities across the nation, including New York, Los Angeles, Milwaukee, and others.
"As we have said from the beginning, our goal is not to abolish affirmative action, but simply to abolish illegal race-based preferences in the City of Atlanta," said Matthew Glavin, SLF President. "Mayor Campbell, it’s time to sit down shoulder-to-shoulder and begin discussing the City’s opportunity to develop a legal program which will truly benefit Atlanta’s disadvantaged small and local businesses. With the report released today, the ball is in your court."

Since 1975, the City of Atlanta has maintained a Minority and Female Business Enterprise (MFBE) program for public contracting which includes preferences based on race and gender. In June, SLF delivered a letter to Mayor Campbell and the Atlanta City Council requesting that they dismantle the City’s current program or face a constitutional lawsuit. Similar programs have been dismantled voluntarily or by court order in Fulton County, DeKalb County, the Atlanta Public Schools, and Nashville, Tennessee in the past two years because they utilized race and gender -- rather than need, size, and location -- as the primary criteria for public contracts.

"The very laws that civil rights leaders fought for in the 1960s, which fight government discrimination and guarantee equal opportunity, are the same laws that Mayor Campbell and the City of Atlanta are violating today," said Glavin. "It’s time to move into the 1990s, join arms, and walk across the bridge to the twenty-first century toward a truly color-blind marketplace. The programs exist, and the guarantees against discrimination have been promised. Now it’s time to take the final steps towards Dr. King’s dream, lets take that step together"

Copies of the Special Report are available from Southeastern Legal Foundation, (404) 365-8500 or on the Web at www.southeasternlegal.org. Southeastern Legal Foundation, founded in 1976, is an Atlanta-based public interest law firm with more than 110,000 annual supporters nationwide.

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