Dear CEO friends,
Summer is finally upon us and the Center for Equal Opportunity has been heating up lately, figuratively and literally! Here’s our latest…
Back to Washington, D.C.
As you may have heard, CEO moved offices earlier this month after more than 20 years in nearby Northern Virginia. We are thrilled to be back in Washington, D.C., where we will now be closer to our allies and the fight for colorblind equal opportunity. And though part of our building actually caught fire last week, we love the new location at historic Canal Square. (Thankfully no one was hurt, and our office was spared any damage). But CEO has been sizzling lately on a number of policy fronts.
Winning in the Court of Public Opinion
President and general counsel Devon Westhill has been busy leading the effort to take CEO’s message on the road and across the airwaves, speaking at conferences, meeting with donors, and articulating our mission in podcasts, radio shows, and print media. Mr. Westhill recently joined the Charles Love Show to discuss his remarks at last month’s Old Parkland Conference in Dallas, TX, and touched on several other pressing civil rights issues.
Elsewhere, Mr. Westhill discussed the Left’s civil rights agenda and their many recent defeats. However, Mr. Westhill warned during one of his weekly interviews on the Lars Larson Show, no matter how many of their radical schemes we defeat, they keep coming back with more like a game of Whack-A-Mole. On the Biden administration’s more than two dozen current “equity” plans, Mr. Westhill noted, “The administration has been head and shoulders above any in history at imbuing race-consciousness into every aspect of the federal government.” But CEO won’t ever quit the fight against this nonsense because, as he put it, “‘Equity’ is not just un-American…it is anti-American.”
Mr. Westhill also wrote an important piece recently on the state of our culture in the wake of the tragic mass shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, TX. We encourage you to take a few minutes to read his Townhall.com column, “Mass Shootings and our Collective Insanity.” And if you missed it, check out his deeply personal yet crucially important piece in the Washington Times on his recipe for black success in life against the odds.
CEO is also a frequent source for journalists covering our issues. Mr. Westhill was extensively quoted in a Diverse Issues in Higher Education piece last month, where he predicted the Supreme Court will soon ban affirmative action in college admissions. More on that below.
CEO chairman Linda Chavez has also continued her writing in The Bulwark and her frequent appearances on cables news, PBS, and elsewhere. This week she was interviewed on the Dan Abrams Show and will be a guest on State of the Union with Jake Tapper and Dana Bash this Sunday on CNN at 9:00 a.m. and 12:00 p.m EST. Please check your local listings.
Another victory over diversity quotas
CEO is pitching a perfect game so far in striking out discriminatory quotas on corporate boards. California has led the nation in legislating quotas on boards headquartered in the state. Earlier this year, a state judge struck down a provision in state law mandating representation on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sexual orientation. A different judge found unconstitutional a separate law requiring at least two women on corporate boards. Judge Maureen Duffy-Lewis of the Superior Court of California noted in her opinion that the law violated equal protection guaranteed in the state’s own constitution.
Ms. Chavez filed an amicus brief in a federal suit on this issue, which the 9th Circuit upheld. She knows a thing or two about the operations of corporate boards. Ms. Chavez has served on boards of public corporations for more than a quarter century and has for years chaired the governance committee of a Fortune 500 company, proving a woman doesn’t need a quota to reach the highest levels of corporate boards.
Defeating “diversity over merit” efforts in admissions
Another win for colorblind equal opportunity took place recently not in the courts but at the ballot box, and surprisingly, in San Francisco. In what even The New York Times called a “landslide election,” voters removed three sitting school board members who had championed “diversity” over merit-based selection at the city’s premiere public school, Lowell High School. The Asian American community, in particular, opposed the move to replace test scores and grades as the primary criteria for selecting students and organized the recall effort. The new board voted to reinstate merit-based placement at the school.
CEO has long been involved in local fights around the country to ensure that merit-based admission, not racial-balancing, be the guiding principle in school placement. CEO helped Virginia residents recently fight a similar move to eliminate merit-based admissions at Thomas Jefferson High School in Fairfax County.
Watchdog on Title IX and due process
We promised last month to keep you posted on new developments in the Biden administration’s efforts to weaponize Title IX, issue new regulations, and roll back due process on college campuses. The much-anticipated new proposed regulations on Title IX have now been issued by the administration. As expected, they are disastrous. Much of the news coverage has focused on new obligations the U. S. Department of Education wants to impose on schools to accommodate transgender students. But one of the most disturbing aspects of the proposed regs is the rollback of protections for students accused of sexual harassment or assault to confront their accusers—a basic tenet of American law.
It is imperative that we protect free speech, due process, and women’s sports on college campuses. Ms. Chavez has been sounding the alarm on this issue on national TV and her appearances on the popular Beg to Differ podcast. CEO will be providing extensive comments to the Department of Education on the proposed regs in the coming weeks. Our role as watchdog here is vital and we’ll continue to keep the public and our supporters informed.
Preparing for landmark SCOTUS case
Last but certainly not least, CEO has continued its preparation for what is shaping up to be a milestone in the fight for colorblind equal opportunity. Last month, we assisted in crafting and joined a Supreme Court amicus brief filed by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF) in the consolidated cases of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. Harvard and SFFA v. UNC, urging the Court to overturn SCOTUS precedent permitting the use of race in college admissions.
As a former civil rights government official, Mr. Westhill also joined a brief filed by the American Center for Law and Justice (ACLJ). CEO had previously urged the Court to take the case in amicus briefs we joined in each case, coordinated our efforts with allies, and appealed to the Court in media appearances and op-eds.
Given their recent decisions in other high-profile cases, we are quite optimistic the Court will strike down the legality of racial preferences in college admissions next year once and for all. And that will be a day all Americans should celebrate.
In the meantime, we hope you enjoy some July 4th fireworks and get to celebrate Independence Day weekend with friends and family. We’ll have more developments soon.
Stay tuned and stay safe!
Rudy Gersten
Executive Director
