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 …
Washington University Complaint 2019
Washington University Complaint 2019 Related posts: CEO’s Successful Challenge to Racial Preferences in Admission at Texas Tech Politicized external review panels as unguided “diversity” missiles: California university administrators remain ultra-slow learners Congratulations to Texas Tech! TESTIMONY OF ROGER CLEGG, PRESIDENT AND GENERAL COUNSEL, CENTER FOR EQUAL OPPORTUNITY BEFORE THE U.S. COMMISSION ON CIVIL RIGHTS REGARDING THE PROPOSED EMPLOYMENT NON-DISCRIMINATION ACT
The Fate of Preferences
An Original Intention In her decision in the Harvard race case, released in September, Judge Allison Burroughs observed that “it was always intended that affirmative action programs be limited in duration.” The judge was right. That was the intention, as Justice O’Connor demonstrated long ago. In her opinion for the Court in 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger, still the leading race-based admissions case, O’Connor repaired to first principles in quoting a 1984 case, Palmore v. Sidoti, specifically its teaching that “a core principle” of the Fourteenth Amendment was “to do away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.” Accordingly, …
Discriminating Pitches
Make the Game Open to All Baseball is my sport, I once wrote in this space. So why must Major League Baseball continue to encourage discrimination on the basis of race and sex in its business operations? MLB does not see its Diversity Fellowship Program as discriminatory, but how can it not be? The program is for recent college graduates aiming to have a business career in baseball. You need a grade point average of at least 3.0. Degrees in economics, analytics, computer science, applied mathematics, law and business are “strongly” encouraged, which is good. Disappointing to me is that …
More on Harvard
Recently the James G. Martin Center for Academic Renewal was kind enough to ask me to write for them on the decision last month in the Harvard case, in which the school is accused (rightly, in my view) of discriminating in its admissions against Asian Americans. Here’s what I wrote for them. In a long-awaited decision, federal trial judge Allison Burroughs has ruled that, while Harvard does consider a student’s race in determining who gets in and who doesn’t (“the use of race in and of itself is admitted”), nonetheless Harvard is not breaking the law. That outcome was not …
The Meaning of 77
Race Should Not Be a Factor I don’t usually spend time looking at opinion surveys. But a poll out the other day caught my attention on account of its main finding, which is that race should not play any factor in college admissions. This was the work of the Marquette Law Poll, a nationwide survey of voters sponsored by the Catholic University law school, and the arresting number is 77, as in the percent of voters who oppose Supreme Court decisions upholding the use of race as one factor in deciding which applicants get in. Preferences typically poll well—I mean …
Preferences in Washington Higher Education
Next month, voters in the state of Washington will decide whether to leave in place the ban there on discrimination and preferences in their state and local government contracting, employment, and education that they overwhelmingly endorsed in a similar ballot initiative in 1998. Just before that election, the Center for Equal Opportunity published a study that documented the extent to which such discrimination was found at the University of Washington and Washington State University. We have recently sent this study to some of our allies out there, noting that it is fair to point out to the voters this time …
Meaningful Numbers
How About 10 Percent? Reading the district court’s decision upholding Harvard College’s use of race in its admissions program, I was struck by Judge Allison Burroughs’ treatment of the term “critical mass.’’ It entered the affirmative action vocabulary in 1992, when the University of Michigan Law School adopted a new admissions policy that would use race to admit a more diverse student body. Barbara Grutter sought entry to the school but was turned down. She sued the law school, ultimately losing in the Supreme Court in 2003. That ruling, Grutter v. Bollinger, is the leading case on “consideration” of race …
Harvard Beats Asian Americans
For now, at least. A federal trial judge has ruled that, while race is considered by Harvard in determining who gets in and who doesn’t (“the use of race in and of itself is admitted”), and while the plaintiff group has standing in this case to challenge the resulting discrimination against Asian Americans (in line with an earlier ruling), nonetheless Harvard is not breaking the law. The outcome was not surprising, and the judge’s 130-page opinion is unlikely to change many minds or alter the expected trajectory of the case to the Supreme Court. The judge found, “Race is only …
William Bradford Reynolds, 1942-2019
Making the Case for Colorblind Law News came the other day that William Bradford Reynolds had passed away, from cancer. He was 77. It was in the summer of 1981 that President Reagan named Reynolds to run the Civil Rights Division of the U.S. Department of Justice. He was a surprising choice. Reynolds was a stellar litigator but had little experience in civil rights law. In an interview years ago for a book I was writing on the Reagan presidency, Reynolds said he had been hoping to be appointed to head up the Civil Division. Prior to Reynolds’s appointment, William …