Overshadowed by California's glitzier recall election, Proposition 54, the so-called "Racial Privacy Initiative" that would restrict state agencies' collection of information on race, ethnicity and national origin, remains a mystery to millions of voters.

An army of opponents has denounced Proposition 54 as a "racist" catastrophe-in-the-making that could cripple the state's ability to battle diseases, fight crime, root out job discrimination, curb racial profiling and close the gap between underperforming students of color and their white and Asian American classmates.

But the state legislative analyst and other legal experts say federal laws requiring collection of racial and ethnic data, along with exemptions for medical research and patients, could blow bazooka-sized holes in the measure.

Even Proposition 54's author, Sacramento businessman and University of California Regent Ward Connerly, contends the measure is largely symbolic and that the exemptions and ambiguities break in favor of continued data collection in several key instances.

The one thing most everyone agrees on is this: If Proposition 54 passes, the practical implications will be battled out in the courts for years to come. The measure shares space on the Oct. 7 recall ballot.

Connerly sees Proposition 54, sometimes called "Son of 209," as the next logical step to Proposition 209, which in 1996 outlawed racial preferences in public hiring, contracting and university admissions.

"If you can't discriminate and you can't give preferential treatment, we don't believe that you even need to be gathering data and classifying people," said Connerly, who is of African American, Indian and European ancestry. "I believe categorizing human beings is immoral, and I want to squeeze race out of the equation."

Nevertheless, he said, Proposition 54 is not intended to exclude all data collection. "Proposition 54 is far more symbolism than it is altering the levers of government," he said.

According to the nonpartisan state legislative analyst, much of the racial data collected by California schools and state and local agencies would be exempt from Proposition 54 because its collection is necessary to comply with federal laws or to qualify for federal funding.

For example, the University of California system still would be required to identify the racial and ethnic composition of its student body to qualify for billions of dollars in federal funding, Connerly said.

Public elementary and secondary schools also gather race-related data to qualify for federal dollars that target specific groups of underachieving students. But state Superintendent of Public Instruction Jack O'Connell said the federal "Leave No Child Behind" program requires only that reading and math scores be categorized by race and ethnicity for students in third grade through eighth grade and students in the 10th grade. O'Connell said the state also tests students in science, language arts, writing, spelling and history.

Under Proposition 54, he said, "we would lose information, for example, on how our Hispanic kids are doing compared to the rest of our kids in science."

O'Connell gave two examples of how such data has made a difference. A San Diego County elementary school looked at its 2001-02 state test scores and learned that many African American students were struggling to read. So the school created a literacy program that involved parents, and in one year boosted the percentage of African American students who met proficiency standards from 25 percent to 40 percent.

Similarly, in 2001, the San Jose Unified School District discovered that only 22 percent of Latino graduates had taken the college preparatory courses required for admission to California's public universities, compared with 58 percent of Asian American graduates.

Deputy Superintendent Don Iglesias said his district increased the courseload for all students, then created homework centers and brought in more counselors and tutors. The following year, 50 percent of Latino graduates qualified for the UC or California State University systems.

Statewide, just 40 percent of Latino high school students graduate and just 2 percent qualify for UC admission, said Maria Blanco, senior counsel for the Mexican American Legal Defense and Educational Fund. She said such information would be lost under Proposition 54 because the federal government does not require its collection.

"Many parents aren't college-educated and don't know which classes their kids need to take," said Blanco, whose organization uses the data to identify and help schools with the lowest rates of college-bound kids.

The federal Department of Education requires the state to report the race and ethnicity of all 6 million public school children every two years.

But whether schools and other state agencies collecting race-related data to meet federal requirements could use that data for their own purposes under Proposition 54 is a huge and open question.

The answer is "no," according to the Pacific Legal Foundation, which analyzed Proposition 54 at the request of proponents and noted it prohibits "separating, sorting or organizing (data) by race, ethnicity, color or national origin."

The legislative analyst and the nonprofit California Budget Project say, "Maybe."

It's also unclear whether state agencies could use census records and other racial and ethnic data collected by the federal government.

Another critical question is whether California health care professionals could continue to collect a variety of data to track and fight diseases that often vary across racial and ethnic lines.

"Disease is not colorblind," said Dr. Jack Lewin, head of the California Medical Association. "This could lead to a public health disaster."

Lewin, one of several health care experts who testified at a legislative hearing on Proposition 54 last week, offered examples of medical findings gleaned from state data that he said could not be collected under Proposition 54: White women have the highest incidence of breast cancer; women of Vietnamese descent have the highest rate of cervical cancer; Asian/Pacific Islanders have the highest rate of tuberculosis; African Americans have the highest infant mortality rate; people of color receive inferior medical care even when they have medical insurance.

Proposition 54 specifically exempts "medical research subjects and patients," and some experts say that could protect the collection of race-related data used by health care researchers.

"It seems to me every person whose race a doctor might want to know about is either a patient or a research subject," said Vikram Amar, a professor at UC's Hastings College of the Law.

"If I'm focusing on the race of the guy I'm treating, he's my patient; if I'm focusing on other people of his race or ethnicity to get data from them to help me treat the guy, then I can consider all those people research subjects."

Connerly agrees. "There is nothing a health agency wants to collect that they would be prohibited from collecting," he said.

But Lewin and others aren't convinced. Lewin said much of the data used by medical professionals comes from nonmedical sources, including birth and death records, school districts and county agencies -- sources CMA lawyers believe aren't exempt from Proposition 54.

Connerly said that if the CMA lawyers are right, he would ask the Legislature to pass a law that allows racial and ethnic data collection for all health-related purposes.

However, Proposition 54 is written in a way that makes it much tougher to change than other laws: It requires a two-thirds majority of both houses of the Legislature, as well as the governor's approval.

"It's another totally new and bizarre aspect of Proposition 54 that will be open to (constitutional) challenge," Amar said. "Opponents could argue that by making a law against collecting racial or ethnic data subject to some unique procedural hurdle, you are somehow discriminating against people who need the data under the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause."

Opponents say the proposition also would hurt the state's ability to root out discrimination.

The federal Equal Employment Opportunity Commission requires employers with 100 or more workers, as well as firms that contract with the federal government, to file racial and ethnic data. And Proposition 54 grants the state Department of Fair Employment and Housing, which monitors job discrimination, a 10-year exemption.

But the state wouldn't be able to collect race-related information from companies it does business with. And local agencies, including police departments, couldn't collect racial and ethnic data except to identify potential suspects, assign prisoners or conduct undercover operations.

Two legal experts from the state attorney general's office, Mark Chekal-Bain and Will Brieger, said that under Proposition 54, their office might not be able to identify racial or ethnic patterns of hate crimes, gangs, domestic-violence homicides and police discrimination.

"We can't respond to anecdotes -- we need to look at patterns," Brieger said.

Connerly argues that individual police departments, in response to complaints of discrimination, could order the collection of such data "to carry out their law enforcement duties."

He concedes that Proposition 54 weakens the state's ability to detect discrimination. But to achieve a color-irrelevant society, "we cannot simply wait until everybody is absolutely certain there is absolutely no discrimination against anybody," he said. "We will be waiting until hell freezes over."