Your Tax Dollars in Action | Center for Equal Opportunity

Last year I wrote here about the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s ridiculous “disparate impact” lawsuit against Kaplan Higher Learning Corp. The Obama administration sued Kaplan for running credit checks on employee applicants – similar, by the way, to the ones the EEOC itself uses. Kaplan had learned that some of its employees had misappropriated student payments and, to provide safeguards against this behavior, it began screening its applicants for major red flags in their credit histories. The EEOC sued Kaplan, arguing that it cannot use credit checks, because use of credit checks has a disparate impact on black applicants.

Anyway, putting aside the inherent dubiousness of the whole lawsuit, there were also severe methodological problems with the Obama administration’s evidence, which relied on “race raters” (!) to determine, by scrutinizing driver’s license photos, the race of the applicants. So the trial judge threw out the case.

Last week, I’m happy to report, the court of appeals affirmed that decision – and in no uncertain terms, I might add, much I’m sure to the Obama administration’s chagrin.

In the case, the Center for Equal Opportunity joined an amicus brief on behalf of the company, filed by Pacific Legal Foundation.

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In a recent post on National Review Online, I asked, “Is President Obama really against sex discrimination?” The reason for my question is a line from his speech last week on that topic: “We need more businesses to make gender diversity a priority when they hire and when they promote.”

In other words, employers do need to consider sex as a factor in whom they hire and whom they promote.

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The New York Times reported last week that the Obama administration has drafted revisions to the Bush administration’s racial-profiling rules. I very much liked the approach taken by the Bush administration (discussed here in a piece I did at the time for National Review Online), so this is not reassuring news.

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As the Supreme Court justices put the finishing touches on their decision in Schuette v. BAMN, one hopes that they are not too busy to read a couple of news stories. In Schuette, it is being argued that a Michigan ballot initiative banning, among other things, racial preferences in university admissions ought to be struck down as antiminority. And yet, in California, the SCA 5 legislative effort to repeal the ban there on racial preferences in university admissions was recently withdrawn because of pressure from a racial minority, namely Asians.

The takeaway, of course, is that racial preferences are (increasingly) unworkable and untenable in a society that is (increasingly) multiracial and multiethnic. And we have learned that, duh, maybe banning racial preferences and discrimination is not so “antiminority” after all.
And another thing: After the SCA 5 effort was derailed, the response of some African American and Latino state legislators was to block an up-until-then uncontroversial bill being pushed by, you guessed it, an Asian American legislator. Which shows why the federal Constitution takes race off the table for regular politics, and why states ought to do so as well. The supporters of SCA 5, in other words, are – ironically – making the case for why antipreference ballot initiatives are wise.
The justices can add all this to the other reasons for upholding the state’s ban discussed earlier here.

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I’ll have more about this in a future email, but here’s a heads-up about a paper I cowrote and that the Heritage Foundation has just published, titled “What Congress Can Do to Stop Racial Discrimination.” And here’s the paper’s abstract:
Discrimination on the basis of race and ethnicity is unconstitutional, unlawful, and morally repugnant. The government should not sort people according to such innate characteristics, yet such criteria often factor into government programs and protections. Jobs should go to the most qualified individuals; contracts should be awarded to the lowest qualified bidders; the students who are most likely to excel academically should be admitted to taxpayer-funded universities; and all should be protected equally from discrimination. A number of states have enacted laws banning all forms of discrimination. Congress should eliminate racial discrimination in federal contracting and employment and federally funded programs, including educational institutions; require disclosure of preferential university admission policies; and limit and clarify when claims of “disparate impact” may be brought.

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Barry Mills, president of Bowdoin College, has announced that he is resigning — but that he’s not retiring. So, did the shellacking that the school has gotten — as a self-parody of political correctness — by the National Association of Scholars have anything to do with it? I don’t know, and I doubt that Bowdoin and Mills will ever admit it, true or not.

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Finally, we had some nice shout-outs of the Center for Equal Opportunity’s work this week. Conservative columnist Walter Williams quotes us favorably here and the Competitive Enterprise Institute’s Hans Bader does so here.

The National Association of Scholars, meanwhile, notes that the Project of Fair Representation “is looking for student plaintiffs to challenge racial discrimination in admissions decisions at Harvard, UNC-Chapel Hill, and the University of Wisconsin.” Then it also correctly adds:
When it comes to discrimination on the basis of race, ethnicity, or sex, however, it’s even more clearly illegal in faculty hiring and promotion, as Roger Clegg has explained here. In light of this, the National Association of Scholars is also seeking to identify people who believe they have been discriminated against in faculty hiring or promotion and are willing to file lawsuits. We aren’t targeting particular institutions, but our goal is to document cases of unfair racial discrimination against competent faculty members. If you are or know a faculty member who was denied promotion or hiring, and you have grounds to believe that race, ethnicity, or sex was a factor, please get in touch with us.

Our study documenting the use of racial preferences at the University of Wisconsin — which probably helped prompt the interest in a lawsuit against this school, just noted — was cited in the Chronicle of Higher Education here.

And this open letter from a civil-rights advocate, while not on our side of the aisle, did refer to “the Center for Equal Opportunity, the most prominent organization advocating the dismantlement of affirmative action in America.” Of course, we’ll take that as a compliment!

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