Category Archive

Last Tuesday, September 9, at the Mayflower Hotel in Washington, D.C., there was a multipanel event on “Civil Rights in the United States” sponsored jointly by the Federalist Society, the Heritage Foundation, and the Cato Institute.  Needless to say, these issues are always of interest and have particular salience these days in light of the ongoing drama in Ferguson.  I was the opening speaker on the opening panel, which discussed “Disparate Impact and the Rule of Law: Does Disparate Impact Liability Make Everything Illegal?”  You can listen to the panel discussion here (my opening remarks start at the 5:30 mark …

Why would federal lawmakers want to encourage racial and ethnic discrimination? Unfortunately, Republican senators Tim Scott (S.C.), Deb Fischer (Neb.), Rob Portman (Ohio), Rand Paul (Ky.), and Marco Rubio (Fla.), as well as Senate Democrat Mark Pryor (Ark.), recently introduced a resolution that would do just that. S. Res. 511 “encourages corporate, academic, and social entities, regardless of size or field of operation” to adopt some version of the National Football League’s “Rooney Rule.” That rule, named after Daniel Rooney, the owner of the Pittsburgh Steelers, was implemented in 2003. It requires every NFL team with a coach or general-manager …

My handy online dictionary defines “enabler” as “a person who encourages or enables negative or self-destructive behavior in another.”  Another online definition:  “one who enables another to persist in self-destructive behavior … by providing excuses or by making it possible to avoid the consequences of such behavior.” And that’s a fair description of the role the Left is playing, or would like to play, with respect to crime and substance abuse in many African American communities, isn’t it?  And this includes, alas, the Attorney General, as the Center for Equal Opportunity’s Linda Chavez discussed in her latest column.   The …

Recently the Obama administration’s Department of Education published a notice in the Federal Register, soliciting applications for the award of a new program:  “The objective of this program is to support a Center for the Study of Distance Education and Technological Advancements at an institution of higher education … to study and develop best practices in postsecondary education for online education and the use of technology-based teaching and learning tools.”  Okay, but then the notice goes on to state that, if a school is more than 85 percent white, then it is not eligible.  Period. As discussed here on an …

About a year ago, the U.S. Supreme Court overturned a court of appeals decision that had upheld the University of Texas’s use of racial and ethnic admissions preferences, ruling that the court of appeals had not been strict enough in its scrutiny of the school’s discrimination against the plaintiff, Abigail Fisher.  Last week a divided court of appeals panel on remand has again upheld the university’s discriminatory admissions policy (here are the judges’ opinions).  It’s likely that this case is now headed back to the Supreme Court. The good news is that the court of appeals ruled on the merits — …

I have frequently seen it asserted recently that, even though African Americans don’t use drugs more frequently than whites and others, the war on drugs is locking them up at a wildly disproportionate rate. Now, of course one answer is that, even if use rates are the same, it doesn’t follow that the incarceration rates should be the same. People are typically locked up not for using but for dealing. And some kinds of dealing — for example, in open-air markets — are more likely to result in arrests than others. (And I have to note that most criminals are not drug criminals …

Much was written last week about the 50th anniversary of the Civil Rights Act, signed into law by President Lyndon B. Johnson on July 2, 1964. But recently there was another important historical landmark, namely the 35th anniversary of an unfortunate milestone in that law’s interpretation: United Steelworkers v. Weber, decided on June 27, 1979, by the Supreme Court.  In this week’s email, adopted from a column I published on National Review Online, I’ll explain why this case is noteworthy. In Weber the Court allowed “affirmative action” discrimination against a white employee, notwithstanding the clear language of the 1964 Act, …

The Senate Judiciary Committee will hold hearings on Wednesday about legislation to negate the Supreme Court’s decision a year ago in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down the coverage formula for Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act (VRA) of 1965.  One of the witnesses will be Center for Equal Opportunity board member Abigail Thernstrom, a leading expert on the VRA.  CEO chairman Linda Chavez and I have also testified about the Act in the past, and the balance of this email is drawn for a National Review Online column of mine this week. The announced aim of the …

The big political news last week was, of course, the defeat of House majority leader Eric Cantor in his Republican primary.  Not so coincidentally, the day before that I had noted on National Review Online that a number of conservative leaders had requested a meeting with Rep. Cantor regarding proposed changes to the Voting Rights Act being pushed by the Left because it is unhappy with last year’s Supreme Court decision in Shelby County v. Holder.  The letter the leaders sent explained why the bill in question is a bad idea, and the leaders wanted Rep. Cantor to come out forthrightly …

This week (Tuesday, at 10:00 a.m.), the House Subcommittee on Workforce Protections will hold a hearing entitled, “The Regulatory and Enforcement Actions of EEOC: Examining the Concerns of Stakeholders.” There will be a live webcast. The subcommittee’s press release notes that members have “shared concerns with EEOC ‘guidance’ that limits employers’ use of criminal background checks during the hiring process.” Relatedly, it also notes the subcommittee’s interest regarding the Commission’s increasing reliance on cases alleging “systemic” discrimination, rather than focusing its efforts on individual complaints of discrimination.  I say “relatedly” because the common denominator is the Obama administration’s infatuation with the “disparate impact” …