Massachusetts state Senator Adam Hinds (D-Pittsfield) argues for his proposed constitutional amendment to make unequal outcomes unconstitutional during a legislative committee hearing on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Screenshot.
A Massachusetts state legislator wants to make unequal outcomes by race and other categories a violation of the state constitution that would prompt action by the state government.
The proposed constitutional amendment would add sexual orientation to the currently protected classes of sex, race, color, creed, and national origin and add a sentence after that stating: “Persistent unequal outcomes among such categories shall constitute inequality under the law and shall thereby be unconstitutional.”
The idea is to get state officials to make policy changes whenever unequal outcomes among certain classes of people are found, in order to try to make the outcomes equal.
“Massachusetts has a fundamental obligation to eliminate not only overt but subtle discrimination in state laws as it works to remedy these inequities. And we have an obligation to aggressively and unceasingly intervene until equal opportunity is visible in its outcomes that we create,” state Senator Adam Hinds (D-Pittsfield), the sponsor of the measure, told a legislative committee this past week. (A transcript of the discussion during the hearing is available here.)
Racial minorities and others have for too long suffered under state government policies that appear to treat everyone the same but actually don’t, Hinds said.
“This amendment is critical to addressing inequality that arises from laws that appear to be neutral on their face but have for decades had a disproportionate negative impact on communities of color, religious minorities, and immigrants,” Hinds told the Massachusetts Legislature’s Joint Committee on the Judiciary during an online hearing Tuesday, April 6.
Hinds envisions a new Office of Antiracism in state government with a leader empowered to “coordinate across all agencies and branches of government to promote antiracist policy and work[] to undo the harmful effects of racism in all aspects of life including in healthcare, finance, education, housing, environmental policy, and the justice system,” according to a related bill he has filed.
During the hearing, Hinds outlined how state officials would be expected to fix social inequities, with the assumption that inequities arise because of unfair government policy.
“The impact and implication is that when persistent disparities and outcomes exist by race, for example, then the state must take action to remedy that, by force of law,” Hinds said. “You can imagine this forcing more proactive action to address housing access, education funding, health interventions, justice system oversight, and more.”
Hinds got pushback from state Representative Colleen Garry (D-Dracut), who suggested that existing state offices have the authority to challenge or overturn state policies that violate the rights of people in the state, including protected classes.
“I guess I’m a little confused about changing the language of the constitution. Wouldn’t we already have the ability, through the inspector general or the attorney general, or someone else to – the courts — to be able to determine if the outcome of a policy … is not getting the outcome that we want?” Garry asked.
Hinds suggested the current system is too scattershot, because it depends on individual initiative by certain state officials.
“I guess my first reaction is: They could, but do they? And where is the mandate? Is it only when it’s brought on a case-by-case basis? Is it when there’s a lawsuit filed? Where is the impetus, and where is the initiative?” Hinds said. “And I think this would put in statute that it’s clear that if you have those disparate outcomes, it’s evidence that there’s a problem, and there’s evidence that there’s a need to intervene.”
The two legislators represent opposite wings of the state’s dominant Democratic Party.
Hinds, during his earlier remarks, cited Ibram Kendi as the inspiration for the proposed state constitutional amendment. Kendi, a professor of history at Boston University, has called for public policy to be “outcome-centered” and “victim-centered” – and that it’s irrelevant whether a policy is intended to be race-neutral or not.
Kendi is the founding director of Boston University’s Center for Antiracist Research. As an example of an anti-racist policy, Kendi supports race-based reparations to try to eliminate the wealth gap between whites and blacks. He sees requiring identification in order to vote as a form of race-based voter suppression.
People justify racist policies that are in their self-interest, Kendi argues, citing his research into black history and public policy. “What I found, actually, is instead of racist ideas leading to racist policies, I actually found racist policies leading to racist ideas,” Kendi said during a June 2019 interview at The Aspen Institute.
Kendi in September 2019 at the University of California at Berkeley said he’d like to eliminate the descriptions “not racist” and “race neutral” — which he said would force people “to recognize that all policies are either racist or anti-racist.”
Kendi drew nationwide attention in September 2020 when he challenged the notion that Amy Coney Barrett, then a nominee for the U.S. Supreme Court and now a member of the court, cannot not be a racist because she and her husband are raising two black children from Haiti whom they adopted.
Some White colonizers "adopted" Black children. They "civilized" these "savage" children in the "superior" ways of White people, while using them as props in their lifelong pictures of denial, while cutting the biological parents of these children out of the picture of humanity. https://t.co/XBE9rRnoqq
To be enacted, Hinds’s proposed constitutional amendment would require support from at least 50 of the 200 Massachusetts state legislators during the current 2020-2021 legislative session and then also during the 2022-2023 legislative session – and if it did, would then go to the state’s voters in the November 2024 general election.
The proposed amendment would alter Article I in Part the First of the Massachusetts Constitution. The original state constitution, largely written by John Adams, was approved by voters in 1780. It has been amended 120 times since then.
Here’s the original 1780 version of Article I:
All men are born free and equal, and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing, and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness.
All people are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. Equality under the law shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed or national origin.
Here’s what Article I would look like if state Senator Hinds’s amendment is approved by state legislators and by voters:
All people are born free and equal and have certain natural, essential, and unalienable rights; among which may be reckoned the right of enjoying and defending their lives and liberties; that of acquiring, possessing and protecting property; in fine, that of seeking and obtaining their safety and happiness. Equality under the law and within the policies of the commonwealth shall not be denied or abridged because of sex, race, color, creed, sexual orientation, or national origin.
Persistent unequal outcomes among such categories shall constitute inequality under the law and shall thereby be unconstitutional.
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Massachusetts state Senator Adam Hinds (D-Pittsfield) argues for his proposed constitutional amendment to make unequal outcomes unconstitutional during a legislative committee hearing on Tuesday, April 6, 2021. Screenshot. 
