Author: Tony Guan, Vice President of Equal Rights for All PAC (erfapac.com), X: @ECalifornians
Date: 03/18/2026
California’s State Assembly recently voted to put a new constitutional amendment, Assembly Constitutional Amendment 7 (ACA 7), on the November 2026 ballot which would change the language in California’s constitution that guarantees equal treatment by state government regardless of race in public education. The amendment is currently being reviewed by the State Senate, which must also approve the amendment in order for it to move forward.
Billed as an “update” to California’s anti-discrimination laws, the measure would actually fundamentally alter the landmark constitutional provision enacted by California voters in 1996 that prohibits race and sex discrimination in public education. The measure would leave the prohibition in place only for “higher education admissions” decisions, removing the prohibition from all other public education matters. So if the measure is adopted, race and sex discrimination would no longer be prohibited by the California constitution in the state’s K-12 programs or in college financial aid.
An analysis of the bill’s actual text—and specifically how that text is presented through standard legislative formatting—reveals a significant discrepancy between how the bill looks to a casual reader and what it legally achieves. Through a clever use of deletions and exclusionary clauses, ACA 7 quietly strips constitutional protections from massive sectors of California’s public education system.
Here is a breakdown of the text differences, the deceptive nature of the legislative redline formatting, and the real-world impact of the bill.
I. The Core Text Difference: Narrowing the Scope of "Education"
To understand the shift, we must first look at the plain text. The primary change in ACA 7 is the systematic deletion of the broad term "public education" and its replacement with a much narrower term: "higher education admissions and enrollment."
Original Prop 209 (California Constitution, Article I, Section 31(a)):
"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."
ACA 7 Proposed Amendment (2026 Version):
"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, higher education admissions and enrollment, or public contracting."
Furthermore, the new bill adds a vital exclusionary clause in Section (b):
"(b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section’s effective date and is limited to the areas of public employment, higher education admissions and enrollment, and public contracting."
II. The Sleight of Hand: Visualizing the Deception
When bills that amend existing laws are published on the California Legislative Information website or in official voter guides, they use a standard visual format: deleted text is shown in red strikeout and newly added text is shown in blue italics.
While this format is meant to provide transparency, in the case of 2026 ACA 7, it actively obscures the magnitude of the legal changes.
Exhibit A: Disguising a Deletion as a "Precision Edit"
Below is a how the legislative redline appears to a reader reviewing Section 31(a):
And it’s a screenshot from the official ACA 7 Bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260ACA7
To make it easier to read, this is the exact ACA 7 format and text:
SEC. 31. (a) 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, higher education admissions and enrollment, or public contracting.
It for sure appears to be a “Precision Edit” as it highlights the addition of “admissions and ” without visualizing the deletion of “public” in front of “education”…
Imagine how serious readers (voters) will respond once they realize that the actual edition highlight should actually be like this:
…in the operation of public employment, public higher education admissions and enrollment, or public contracting.
To a casual voter scanning the text, without crossing out "public education" and replacing it with "higher education admissions and enrollment" simply looks like lawmakers are being more precise with their vocabulary. Because college admissions are the most highly publicized battlegrounds for affirmative action, a reader will naturally assume: "They are just updating the language to target the specific issue we argue about." The format entirely hides the omission. It visually distracts the reader from the fact that by specifically limiting the ban to "higher education admissions," all K-12 public schools, scholarships, and general academic programs have been quietly dropped from constitutional protection. It disguises a massive legal subtraction as a helpful addition.
Exhibit B: An Exclusionary Clause Masquerading as Summary Boilerplate
First the original text of the Proposition 209 Section (b):
(b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section's effective date.
In Section (b) of the new ACA 7 bill, the drafters added new italicized text regarding the scope of the law:
And again it’s a screenshot from the official ACA 7 Bill: https://leginfo.legislature.ca.gov/faces/billNavClient.xhtml?bill_id=202520260ACA7
To make it easier to read, this is the exact text with the presented format:
(b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section’s effective date and is limited to the areas of public employment, higher education admissions and enrollment, and public contracting.
A serious reader would have spotted the big change here than just the currently visualized “admission and” addition.
In comparison to the original Proposition 209 text, the correct edition visualization of the ACA 7 should be:
b) This section shall apply only to action taken after the section’s effective date and is limited to the areas of public employment, higher education admissions and enrollment, and public contracting.
See the huge difference?
Because of its placement at the end of a logistical sentence regarding "effective dates," the new phrase looks like a helpful, redundant summary to tie up the paragraph.
In legal reality, "is limited to" is a hard boundary. It legally guarantees that absolutely nothing outside of those three specific areas can be protected by this section of the constitution. The formatting makes a severe legal wall look like harmless, routine boilerplate text.
III. The Real-World Impact: A Massive Rollback of Protections
Legally, this is not a minor clarification. It is a fundamental reduction in the scope of California's anti-discrimination law.
Under the original Prop 209, "public education" covered the entirety of the state's educational apparatus. By replacing it specifically with "higher education admissions and enrollment," and explicitly limiting the law to those bounds, ACA 7 would legally permit the State to grant preferential treatment or discriminate based on race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in (at least) the following areas:
- All K-12 Public Education: This includes K-12 magnet school admissions, gifted and talented program selection, and district resource allocation.
- Higher Education Financial Aid: State-funded scholarships, grants, and fellowships could once again be distributed based on race or gender, rather than need or merit, because financial aid is separate from "admissions and enrollment."
- Higher Education Programs: Race-exclusive or gender-exclusive dormitories, tutoring programs, and campus resource centers would be entirely exempt from the constitutional ban.
Conclusion
Voters rely on legislative formatting and ballot summaries to understand the laws they are passing. However, the standard redline formatting of ACA 7 serves as effective camouflage. By drawing the eye to the new words added regarding college admissions, the text distracts from the vast territories of public education that have been silently erased from the law.
As this measure moves toward the Senate floor voting and then ballot box, it is critical that voters read past the strikeouts and italics to understand exactly what is missing.
And we should all ask ourselves this question: What are the CA politicians trying to hide from us really?
Maybe a better question: Can we still trust them?
But at this moment, I have yet another question: Why aren’t they sued by the voters yet?
Join the fight: use our one-click tool to email your senator to oppose ACA-7: https://erfapac.com/aca7-2026/