A pro-affirmative action group is renewing efforts to overturn the California law that prohibits public universities from considering race in student admissions.

Attorneys for Michigan-based By Any Means Necessary filed a class-action lawsuit Tuesday in federal court in Oakland. It challenges the constitutionality of the ballot measure approved by the state's voters in 1996.

Both a federal appeals court and the California Supreme Court have rebuffed earlier challenges to the law, known as Proposition 209.

The complaint says a pair of U.S. Supreme Court rulings in affirmative action cases since those earlier decisions warrant another effort to invalidate the part of Proposition 209 that deals with university admissions. The law also barred racial preferences in government hiring and contracts.