Category Archive

Promoting colorblind equal opportunity and merit-based public policy This year the Center for Equal Opportunity (CEO) is thrilled to celebrate 30 years as one of the only conservative organizations specifically dedicated to issues of civil rights, race, and ethnicity. CEO was founded in 1995 in Washington, D.C. to promote merit-based, colorblind equal opportunity. The organization has produced more than 80 studies on racial preferences at colleges, universities, law schools and medical schools and been instrumental in every effort to overturn racial preferences. CEO staff have prepared counsel and provided legal theories used in landmark cases; given expert testimony before local, state, and federal …

Recent confirmations and appointments in key federal civil rights roles are a powerful step forward in restoring equal treatment under the law and ending racial preferences in government and the workplace. New Commissioner Brittany Bull Panuccio joins the EEOC after serving the Department of Justice as an Assistant U.S. Attorney and before that, as Nominations Counsel. Acting Chair Andrea Lucas declared that, now that the EEOC has a quorum, the agency is now “empowered to deliver fully on our promise to advance the most significant civil rights agenda in a generation.” The EEOC’s current objectives signal a decisive shift away …

CEO chairman Linda Chavez visited Washington University in St. Louis this month to discuss rising conservativism among Hispanics and the role immigration policy may play in that movement.  Chavez addressed a packed meeting of the Federalist Society and Latin American Law Student Association.  Joining Chavez was Washington University Law School professor Sheldon Evans.  Chavez told the audience that the rise of Latino conservatism has been taking place over decades, a phenomenon she chronicled in her first book Out of the Barrio: Toward a New Politics of Hispanic Assimilation. She noted that more than 50 years ago, President Richard Nixon received nearly one-third of Mexican Americans’ votes in his re-election, while both …

CEO recently hosted its Fourth Annual Civil Rights Fellowship in Washington, D.C.  CEO Fellows heard from a variety of experts in constitutional and civil rights law and history as well as receiving media training. Our instructors included:  Craig Trainor, Nominee Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Department of Housing and Urban Development   Eric Dreiband, Former Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights, Department of Justice  Kenneth Marcus, Former Assistant Secretary for Civil Rights, Department of Education  Gail Heriot, Commissioner, U.S. Civil Rights Commission, Professor of Law, University of San Diego Law School  Maimon Schwarzschild, Professor of Law, University of San Diego …

Shawna Bray is CEO’s new General Counsel. She is an experienced litigator, having been an associate at Arnold & Porter in Washington D.C., and Richard, Layton & Finger in Wilmington, DE. She was also counsel at Stein Mitchell Beato & Missner LLP in Washington. She has also most recently been a consultant for the Federalist Society’s Freedom of Thought Project and has worked on a number of CEO projects, including drafting an amicus brief in Coalition for TJ v. Fairfax County School Board. Ms. Bray is a graduate of the University of Iowa and Northwestern Law School. Samantha Crane is CEO’s 2025–2026 Visiting Legal Fellow …

Dear friends, We have much to celebrate this Independence Day. From the 60th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act to the 1st anniversary of the monumental Students for Fair Admissions Supreme Court decisions. We at CEO are overjoyed at the continued wins we are notching for colorblind equal opportunity in America. Many of them, however, are not as flashy as the passage of major civil rights legislation or a Supreme Court win but can be just as important. And, for 30 years now, CEO has been a major contributor to the fight to stop identitarian division anywhere we find it. …

The Center for Equal Opportunity is excited to welcome back to the team Peter Abernathy as Visiting Legal Fellow. Peter returns to CEO after participating in CEO’s inaugural Civil Rights Fellowship in 2022. Peter is a 2024 graduate of George Mason University’s Antonin Scalia Law School and currently serving as a law clerk to the Hon. Caroll A. Weimer of the Thirty-First Circuit Court of Virginia. Before college, Peter served for two years as a missionary for the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints in Londrina, Brazil. After concluding his full-time missionary service, Peter earned dual degrees in Geospatial …

Dear friends, Today is Giving Tuesday and this has been the most important year in the more than quarter-century history of the Center for Equal Opportunity. As we continue our work opposing race-based policies by public institutions at all levels, we are asking for your help again. But first let me tell you about some of what we’ve been up to.  As you know, the milestone Supreme Court affirmative action cases SFFA vs Harvard and SFFA vs North Carolina officially made illegal and unconstitutional the use of race in college admissions. This was a signature win for CEO and the most important …

Dear friends, Before updating you on our recent activities, we’d like to express that we share with many of you our anger and sorrow over the horrific terrorist attack on Israeli civilians by Hamas. As many student groups and morally bankrupt campus leaders here at home rush to blame the victims of the terror attack and spread antisemitic propaganda, it’s important to state with no ambiguity that the Center for Equal Opportunity fully supports the nation of Israel and its right to defend itself from these barbaric acts of terrorism.  Here’s our latest: STUDY ON RACIAL AND ETHNIC PREFERENCES AT …

I met Terry Eastland soon after we had both joined the Justice Department during the Reagan administration in the early 1980s, so we were friends for almost exactly four decades. He and I were fellow Texans and appreciated not only Ronald Reagan but Southern cuisine together; to be sure, Terry’s expertise on barbecue in particular was deeper than mine, no doubt helped by the fact that his wife, Jill, was from North Carolina. Terry’s southern roots were manifest in other ways: He was devoted to the Atlanta Braves, and sold encyclopedias and/or Bibles door to door — I forget which, …