Education

Opening Statement of Devon WesthillPresident and General CounselCenter for Equal Opportunity House Committee on the JudiciarySubcommittee on the Constitution, Civil Rights, and Civil Liberties Hearing of March 1, 2022 – Discrimination and the Civil Rights of the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian American Communities Chair Cohen, Ranking Member Johnson, and distinguished Members of the subcommittee, thank you for the opportunity to provide my testimony on “Discrimination and the Civil Rights of the Muslim, Arab, and South Asian American Communities.” My name is Devon Westhill and I am the president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity. CEO is …

This Op-Ed Originally appeared on the Washington Examiner The Supreme Court has before it two ideal vehicles finally to end racial preferences in college admissions. For the sake of socially and economically disadvantaged minorities, the court should courageously end the practice known as affirmative action. One case challenges Harvard’s use of race in admissions decisions. Although a private institution, Harvard receives federal funding and, therefore, is prohibited by civil rights law from discriminating on the basis of race. The other case challenges the University of North Carolina’s use of race in admissions as prohibited by civil rights law and the …

Dear friends and supporters, I am pleased to report to you that CEO joined a Supreme Court amicus brief filed yesterday by our friends at the Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF). The brief supports petitioners in the case of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. University of North Carolina in their challenge to the university’s use of racial preferences in admissions. The brief builds on the arguments made in a separate brief submitted by PLF, and joined by CEO, in the racial preferences case of SFFA v. Harvard. Our hope is that the Supreme Court will agree to hear these cases together and ultimately, …

By a margin of 57% to 43%, California voters in 2020 rejected Proposition 16, which would have allowed the state and local governments to use race and gender as factors in public college admissions, government jobs, and state and local contracting. This essay, based on two research papers for the Center for Equal Opportunity, shows how widespread the rejection was. Background Back in 1996, voters passed Prop 209, which prohibited the use of race, ethnicity, and gender in government jobs, government contracts, and public higher education. Back then, whites were the majority, and Prop 209 won with 55% of the vote. The prohibition was …

The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) today criticized the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit ruling upholding Harvard’s use of racial and ethnic preferences in its undergraduate admissions. CEO urges the Supreme Court to now take the case. CEO Chairman Linda Chavez noted, “Data from Harvard’s own internal analysis of its admissions criteria suggest that low-income Asian American applicants with higher grades and test scores may have been excluded in favor of wealthier blacks and Hispanics. Though this ruling was predictable from the oral argument, we are hopeful the Supreme Court will make the right decision and strike …

(Falls Church, VA) The Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) today released a new report, If California Restores Race Discrimination: Implications for Higher Education, which demonstrates how race may once again dominate the college admissions process if voters adopt Proposition 16 on the ballot in California this November. Proposition 16 seeks to override a state constitutional ban on racial and ethnic preferences, adopted overwhelmingly by California voters in a 1996 ballot initiative. CEO’s report, available here, was written by research fellow Dr. Althea Nagai. The study concludes that when colleges use race as a factor in the admissions process, it is …

The Center for Equal Opportunity is pleased to join other civil liberties and civil rights organizations in welcoming the effective date today of the new federal Department of Education rules for universities and K-12 schools to use in investigating and adjudicating accusations of student- on-student sexual harassment and assault. Adopted in May after a careful process that took more than two years and considered more than 124,000 comments on the proposed rules, the regulations will require educational institutions to act impartially and without bias or prejudgment and to use procedures including live hearings, cross-examination of all witnesses, and other procedures …

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, …