Kudos to Idaho! (And to Pete and Gail!) | Center for Equal Opportunity

Kudos to Idaho!

A couple of months ago, I flagged a bill that had been introduced in the state legislature there which would ban all discrimination and preference on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex in public contracting, education, and employment. I’m now happy to report that the bill passed both houses and last week was signed into law by the governor.

Well done! As I noted in the earlier post, here’s hoping that more states (and the federal government) follow suit.

In the meantime, however, Peter Kirsanow has flagged a bill in California that would do exactly the opposite, namely remove the state law that served as the model for what Idaho did.

So the struggle continues.

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The heart of the new Idaho law is straightforward and should not (in a sane world) be controversial:

“The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national origin in the operation of public employment, public education, or public contracting.”

So, again, here’s hoping that state legislators in more states follow Idaho did in passing such a bill. It’s precisely in line with state constitutional enactments in California, Washington, Michigan, Arizona, Nebraska, and Oklahoma, as well as laws (less precisely) in Florida and New Hampshire.

I should mention here that the Center for Equal Opportunity has consistently played an important role in these enactments, in particular by publishing just before ballot initiatives our studies that document how heavily racial preferences were used in public university admissions in a particular state.

And, again, too bad the federal legislature hasn’t done something like this.

By the way, I’ve co-authored Heritage Foundation papers on this topic with proposed language for both state and federal bills.

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You’ll note that I mentioned Peter Kirsanow in the discussion above. He was kind enough to interview me while he was guest-hosting a radio show recently, and we discussed mostly the issue of racial preferences in university admissions. You can listen to the interview here (the first 20 minutes of the3/31/2020 broadcast at this link).

We talk in particular about the ongoing litigation against Harvard for its use of racial preferences in admissions; you’ll recall that the Center for Equal Opportunity has published studies about Harvard’s discrimination and earlier this year joined and help write an appellate amicus brief supporting the challenge to it. You can read about all this here.

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This gives me a chance to elaborate a bit on the great work that Pete Kirsanow does. (I’ve done this before but it bears repeating.). He’s a frequent ally of the Center for Equal Opportunity, and I’m hoping that you’ll be impressed that we’re associated with a man of his caliber. He is a partner with the law firm of Benesch, Friedlander, Coplan & Aronoff, working within its Labor & Employment Practice Group in Cleveland, and a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, currently serving his third consecutive 6-year term. He was also previously a member of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) from January 2006 to January 2008. Pete testified before the Senate Judiciary Committee on the nominations of John Roberts, Samuel Alito, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan to the Supreme Court, and he continues to testify before and advise members of the U.S. Congress on employment law matters, most recently on November 18 before the House Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight regarding “disparate impact” theory, another pet peeve of the Center for Equal Opportunity. Pete also writes fiction thrillers, and you can enjoy the website he and his fellow commissioner Professor Gail Heriot have created, the New American Civil Rights Project.

I have to share with you Pete’s wonderful and pithy rebuttal from last year’s monstrous “Are Rights a Reality?” USCCR report:

Commission Narasaki writes that the Declaration of Independence was followed by, “a Constitution the condoned the ownership, sale, and enslavement of Black men, women, and children for over 200 years.” N.b. The Constitution was ratified on June 21, 1788. Slavery was formally abolished throughout the United States by the 13th Amendment, which was ratified on December 6, 1865.

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I mention above Pete’s colleague at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, Gail Heriot, and this is a good time to elaborate a bit on her great work as well.

Commissioner Heriot has also been a brave voice who frequently challenges the “progressive” views of the Civil Rights Commission. Read Gail’s dissents to the Commission’s reports on women in prison, on sexual harassment and free speech, hate crimes, and immigration detention. And, hot off the presses, is her statement this week on the Commission’s “Stand Your Ground” report here.

Gail is a professor of law at the University of San Diego, where she teaches Civil Rights Law & History, Employment Discrimination, Legislation in the Modern Administrative State, Remedies, and Torts. Gail’s academic writings have appeared in journals like the Michigan Law Review, the Texas Journal of Law & Politics, and the Virginia Law Review. She also writes for popular newspapers and magazines like the Philadelphia Inquirer, the National Review, the Wall Street Journal and the Weekly Standard and blogs on Instapundit and the Volokh Conspiracy. Among the organizations she is active in are the National Association of Scholars, where she sits on the board of directors, and the Federalist Society for Law & Public Policy Studies, where she is chair of the Civil Rights Practice Group.

I’ll add that Gail also is a member of the Federalist Society’s wonderfully named “Race and Sex Working Group” in its Regulatory Transparency Project; that group is chaired by CEO chairman Linda Chavez.

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