A/50/476 English Page 39 order to guarantee by law an effective equality of opportunity for members of ethnic and racial minorities. 153. The United States Supreme Court seems to be taking an increasingly retrogressive position with regard to affirmative action, as is apparent from its decision of 12 June 1995, Adarand Inc. v. Pena, in which it ruled that the award of a contract to a company belonging to a member of an ethnic minority instead of to a company whose owner is white, under the terms of certain programmes in favour of ethnic minorities, was unconstitutional. The Court clarified that "many federal affirmative action programs, under the equal protection component of the Fifth Amendment’s Due Process Clause, must be reviewed by the Courts using ’strict scrutiny’. To surmount this hurdle the program must be shown to meet a ’compelling governmental interest’ and must be ’narrowly tailored to meet that interest’. To many legal scholars strict scrutiny is an insurmountable obstacle. This means the Government could have to prove that each program helps only those individuals who can show they were victims of past discrimination, and not just attempts to help all racial minorities." 154. This retrogressive attitude of the Supreme Court, which is supported by the majority of Congress, stems from the idea that affirmative action measures have achieved their objectives and have thus become pointless. The opponents of affirmative action claim that the system creates reverse discrimination against whites. In California, Governor Pete Wilson, who is seeking the Republican nomination in the 1996 presidential elections, shares this view, and accordingly, on 10 August 1995, called upon the Court of Appeal of the State of California to declare a number of affirmative action programmes unconstitutional. 155. The opposition of the Supreme Court and the majority of Congress to measures directed against racial discrimination runs counter to the conclusions arrived by a recent survey conducted on the initiative of the President of the United States in relation to the implementation of affirmative action programmes. The authors of the survey report the following findings: "There has been undeniable progress in many areas. Nevertheless, the evidence is overwhelming that the problems affirmative action seeks to address - widespread discrimination and exclusion and their ripple effects - continue to exist. "Minorities and women remain economically disadvantaged: the black unemployment rate remains over twice the white unemployment rate; 97 percent of senior managers in Fortune 1000 corporations are white males; in 1992, 33.3 percent of blacks and 29.3 per cent of Hispanics lived in poverty, compared to 11.6 percent of whites. In 1993, Hispanic men were half as likely as white men to be managers or professionals; only 0.4 percent of senior management positions in Fortune 1000 industrial and Fortune 500 service industries are Hispanic. "Blatant discrimination is a continuing problem in the labor market. Perhaps the most convincing evidence comes from ’audit’ studies, in which white and minority (or male and female) job seekers are given similar /...