It’s Not That Complicated

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

The struggle against the Left on racial matters — in which I include politically correct race-based decisionmaking, identity politics, and related and supporting ideologies — is part legal and part cultural. The legal part is straightforward enough and is going tolerably well.  The Center for Equal Opportunity opposes the use of racial preferences, which are now legally constrained to a degree but still far too common in education, employment, and contracting; and it opposes the use of the “disparate impact” approach in the enforcement of our civil-rights laws, which is likewise constrained but not nearly enough.  I’m reasonably optimistic right now that we will continue to make progress — maybe …

Good Briefs in the Harvard Case

Roger CleggEducation

Kudos to the Department of Justice for the amicus brief it filed last week on behalf of the Asian-American plaintiffs in their lawsuit against Harvard University for its use of racial preferences in student admissions. Bear with me while I give a little more detail on why the brief deserves special praise. The law requires that, when race is considered in student admissions — as Harvard admits it is here — the school do so only in a way that passes the two prongs of “strict scrutiny”; that is, that the discrimination be “narrowly tailored” to a “compelling interest.” Alas, …

Percentage of Births to Unmarried Women

Roger CleggCulture & Society, Uncategorized

Besides which country you are born in, in my view the most important factor by far in explaining disparities in all manner of life outcomes (poverty, unemployment, crime, education, you name it) is whether you were born out-of-wedlock. And since Americans are very interested in racial disparities, from time to time I post the federal government’s latest data on this topic. Late last year, the final data for 2018 were published here (the key is Table 9 on page 25), and here’s what we learn: For all racial and ethnic groups combined, 39.6 percent of births in the United States …

We Need More Bills Like This

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

A bill banning preferential treatment on the basis of race, ethnicity, and sex in public contracting, education, and employment — a.k.a. “affirmative action” — has advanced through the Idaho legislature’s relevant house committee. The heart of the bill 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.” Whatever finally happens in Idaho, here’s hoping that state legislators in more states follow Idaho representative …

Virginia Turns Deep Blue

Roger CleggUncategorized

Democrats in Virginia last November gained control of both houses in the state legislature, and elections have consequences. As conservative legal expert Hans Bader has been tirelessly explaining over the last few weeks, Democrats in the state legislature are systematically ruining the state’s business climate and incentivizing frivolous lawsuits, in addition to adopting bills that will release violent criminals from jail or reduce their sentences. The Heritage Foundation likewise sounded the alarm here, noting the passage of the Equal Rights Amendment, discussing gun-control proposals, and criticizing the religious-liberty-threatening Virginia Values Act. And don’t expect Governor Ralph Northam to veto anything …

Bad Old Regulations

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

The Center for Equal Opportunity last week submitted a formal comment on a notice of proposed rulemaking by the Department of Labor’s Office of Federal Contract Compliance Programs (OFCCP).  The matter involves “Nondiscrimination Obligations of Federal Contractors and Subcontractors: Procedures to Resolve Potential Employment Discrimination.” Set out below is our actual comment, which is quite brief.  It incorporates, however, the analysis from a law review article that I wrote and specific edits to the existing regulations.  Both the law review article and the edits are posted on our website, and you can click on the links to them.  As a …

Stopping a Racially Exclusive Awards Program

Roger CleggUncategorized

Kudos to the Trump administration, Washington University in St. Louis, and (of course!) the Center for Equal Opportunity. The occasion is the recent resolution reached regarding a complaint that CEO filed last June with the federal Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights about an illegally discriminatory program being run by the university. The program at issue granted various awards to WUSL students, but only if they were black. A poster advertising the program was sent by a member of the university community to us, and we filed a complaint with OCR. The resolution agreement makes this program — and …

Martin Luther King Day thoughts

Roger CleggUncategorized

What ails us? That is, what do Americans deeply disagree about, and what causes the sense we’ve lost our way? I think they’re related, and that they tie in with this week’s federal holiday. Let’s go through the standard list of our national concerns. It’s not about foreign policy. There’s still a general consensus, which I share, that a cautious interventionism abroad to protect our interests makes sense. I don’t think that President Trump’s decision to kill a terrorist general will be a generally unpopular one. Or look at it this way: If President Obama were still president and had …

Bloomberg’s Unconstitutional Bloomer

Roger CleggUncategorized

According to the Reuters news service last week, “Democratic presidential candidate Michael Bloomberg would seek to standardize federal elections across the United States and prevent states from blocking felons from voting under a plan aimed at expanding access to elections rolled out on Friday.   …   Under the voting rights plan, Bloomberg would seek to create a non-partisan commission that would look to standardize federal elections, including forcing states to restore voting rights to felons and prohibit them from charging onerous fees to get those rights back.” But it would be unconstitutional for the federal government to require states to allow …

No Friend of African Americans

Roger CleggUncategorized

Virginia governor Ralph Northam was humiliated and almost forced to resign early last year when it came to light that he had, as a medical student, appeared in blackface in Michael Jackson impersonation contests.  The issue is not whether this really is a grievous sin; the point is that, for most politicians these days and certainly any Democratic politician, such a revelation requires extreme contrition. And so Governor Northam will apparently spend the balance of his term embracing any race-based, politically correct initiative he can think of.  And he’ll do so even if the proposal is actually antiblack, so long …