As a state elections board deadlocked over placing an anti-affirmative action proposal on the November ballot, a grass-roots coalition has launched an effort aimed at defeating the measure, which calls for a constitutional amendment banning use of gender or racial preferences in university admissions and governmental hiring. The opponents say the petitioners deceived signers by misrepresenting the proposal's true intent and calling it a civil rights initiative. Dean Frank Wu of the WSU Law School noted that affirmative action admissions policies were found to be a "compelling state interest" by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003. He said racial diversity on campuses of many universities in California Washington and Texas , which passed similar bans, has declined into single-digit percentages. About 20 percent of Wayne State Law School students are minorities, he said.