John J. Miller joins CEO board

Roger CleggUncategorized

The Center for Equal Opportunity’s board of directors met last week and voted unanimously in favor of John J. Miller joining the board. John is director of the Dow Journalism Program at Hillsdale College in Michigan. He writes for National Review, the Wall Street Journal, and many other publications. He is also the author of several books, including The First Assassin, a historical thriller set during the Civil War, and The Big Scrum: How Teddy Roosevelt Saved Football.   And I should mention that, when I first came to CEO in 1997, John was already here, and I had the pleasure …

Illegal Labor Department Affirmative-Action Regulations

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

The federal government’s attempt to coerce private and public employers into ignoring the criminal records of prospective employees is not faring well.  Greg Abbott, Texas’s state attorney general, has filed an excellent complaint, challenging the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s “enforcement guidance” that tries to limit employers’ use of criminal-background checks in hiring.  And in EEOC v. Freeman recently, a federal district court threw out the government’s own lawsuit, noting that the “careful and appropriate use of criminal history information is an important, and in many cases essential, part of the employment process of employers throughout the United States” — …

Obama supports racial preferences … again

Roger CleggUncategorized

Earlier this month, the Obama administration filed a brief with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit urging it to rule in favor of the University of Texas’s use of racial and ethnic preferences in admissions. This is the Fisher v. University of Texas case that the Supreme Court decided last summer and sent back to the Fifth Circuit, telling it that it had been too deferential — not strict enough — in the scrutiny it had given the school’s use of preferences. It’s the administration’s third brief on behalf of the school’s practice of discrimination, following earlier filings in the …

Mt. Holly and “Disparate Impact”

Roger CleggDisparate Impact

This year the Supreme Court had agreed to resolve a fundamental question about the Fair Housing Act that it has never answered: Can you be found guilty of racial discrimination if you have not engaged in racial discrimination? Suppose, for example, that the owner of an apartment complex decides that she does not want to rent units to individuals who have been convicted of drug offenses. She makes that decision without regard to race, her policy on its face does not treat people differently because of race, and indeed she enforces it in an evenhanded way, so that it applies equally to …

Voting rights fact-check

Roger CleggUncategorized

A New York Times headline Thursday declared: “Texas’ Stringent Voter ID Law Makes a Dent at the Polls.” A careful reading of the article will leave many readers scratching their heads about that title. The article begins by noting that three prominent Texans — state judge Sandra Watts, state senator Wendy Davis, and state attorney general Greg Abbott — all had photo IDs that did not quite match their names on official voter rolls, and so all had to sign affidavits before they could vote. But . . . they all could and did vote. Jim Wright — another Texan, whom the Times helpfully …

What CEO has been up to …

Roger CleggUncategorized

We recently prepared this one-page summary of the Center for Equal Opportunity’s activities over the past year, and thought that we ought to share it with you. 2013-2014 CEO Activities Report In addition to our speaking (on campuses, coordinating other conservative groups, and with a wide variety of media) and writing (in National Review Online and other magazines, newspapers, and publications), here are just a few highlights of CEO’s work this past year.  We continue to get unmatched bang for the buck. Schuette v. BAMN – The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit had held that Michigan’s …

Dodd-Frank “Diversity”

Roger CleggUncategorized

On Friday a number of Obama administration agencies with financial-sector regulatory responsibilities jointly published in the Federal Register a proposed “Policy Statement Establishing Joint Standards for Assessing the Diversity Policies and Practices of Entities Regulated by the Agencies.”  The statement comes as a result of Section 342 of the Dodd-Frank legislation, which requires these agencies each to “establish an Office of Minority and Women Inclusion” that, in turn, is to develop diversity and inclusion standards for workplaces and contracting. The proposed statement is even worse than the bill itself, since it aggressively applies not only to the agencies themselves but also to all …

BAMN! The Center for Equal Opportunity Zaps Racial Preferences

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

Last week, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral argument in Schuette v. BAMN, a case in which a federal appellate court held — astonishingly — that Michigan voters somehow violated the U.S. Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause by endorsing equal treatment for everyone regardless of race or sex. At issue is Proposal 2 (the Michigan Civil Rights Initiative), a 2006 ballot measure that amended the state constitution to provide that state and local government agencies (including public universities) “shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color, ethnicity, or national …

Brown v. Board of Education …

Roger CleggGovernment Activity

Here’s the essay I just did this for National Review Online’s “Education Week”: It’s depressing that, nearly six decades after Brown v. Board of Education, the legality and morality of racial discrimination in education continues to be a contested issue. Consider: Last month the Obama administration issued “guidance” for universities on the meaning of the Supreme Court’s decision last June in Fisher v. University of Texas. The guidance predictably reiterates that the administration “strongly support[s] diversity” — including, of course, using discrimination in order to achieve it — but, as a legal matter, this is irrelevant if a school is sued, …

The Supreme Court Returns!

Roger CleggUncategorized

The Supreme Court is back this week, and on its docket are two cases the Center for Equal Opportunity helped persuade the Court to hear.  This comes on the heels, of course, of the important role that CEO played in two important civil-rights cases from last term:  Fisher v. University of Texas and Shelby County v. Holder.  It’s been a busy time for us.  But on to this term’s cases. *          *          * The first case is Schuette v. By Any Means Necessary (BAMN).   The full U.S. Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit held that Michigan’s Proposal 2 violates …