The Kavanaugh Hearings

Roger CleggUncategorized

Next week, on September 4, the Senate Judiciary Committee will begin its hearings on the nomination of Brett Kavanaugh to fill retired Justice Anthony Kennedy’s seat on the Supreme Court.  One item that has drawn some attention, and will doubtless draw additional attention at the hearings, is a brief the Mr. Kavanaugh helped author for the Center for Equal Opportunity and other clients before the Supreme Court in 1999.  You can read that brief here. We thought that, as a CEO supporter, you might be interested in the Washington Post article excerpted below, which discusses that brief and what it …

Affirmative Reaction

Terry EastlandRacial Preferences

Now there was some interesting news—the story of a college that had ended affirmative action. I hustled to write a piece about this, only to find out that the College of Charleston was touting its commitment to affirmative action and going to continue to practice it in its admissions program. Too bad, at least for me. I wound up revising my article, published a few weeks ago in The Weekly Standard. The Charleston reversal (or whatever it was) remains compelling for the reminder it sends—namely, that the legal doctrine under which the courts have permitted racial preferences in admissions has …

E Pluribus Unum Revisited

Roger CleggUncategorized

“Charlottesville” was one year ago.  That is, this time last August the “Unite the Right” march took place there (featuring Nazis and other white-power advocates), along with counterprotests, and finally a death when one of the counterprotestors was deliberately hit by a car.   The anniversary has been much in the news, and so I happened to re-read what I sent to Center for Equal Opportunity supporters a year ago, and thought it has stood up pretty well.  So I’m sending it around again.  Note that the Harvard subplot remains in the news, and that CEO is very much involved in …

Will Kavanaugh Finally Give Us a Conservative Court?

Terry EastlandUncategorized

That’s the question conservatives will quit asking within the next five years, as we should have an answer by then. If the answer is that Brett Kavanaugh has not proved to be a judicial conservative, that will be keenly disappointing—especially given his views about judging (he’s an originalist and a textualist) and also his actual judging in cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit (he showed no activist inclinations). In a piece published last month in The Weekly Standard, I took a look at the long-running effort to have sitting a conservative majority (at least five …

A Brief, a Letter, and a Comment

Roger CleggUncategorized

The brief:  A few weeks ago I wrote about the Center for Equal Opportunity’s amicus brief in Hand v. Scott; see this link.  The basic claim there is that it the State of Florida’s system of restoring the right to vote to felons on a case-by-case basis is too “discretionary” and not mechanical enough; as we pointed out, however, it’s hard to see how it can be mechanically determined if a felon has turned over a new leaf, and besides this an odd argument from the side of the aisle that opposes, for example, sentencing guidelines because they do not …

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

CEO StaffDocuments

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   MARCH 16, 2015   Introduction Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman, for the opportunity to testify today. My name is Roger Clegg, and I am president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, a nonprofit research and educational organization that is based in Falls Church, Virginia. Our chairman is Linda Chavez, and our principal focus is on public policy issues that involve race and ethnicity, such as civil rights, bilingual …

Anthony Kennedy’s Legacy: a Split Decision

Terry EastlandUncategorized

I wrote the piece below (published in The Weekly Standard) when Justice Kennedy stepped down. I discussed (briefly) the Justice’s record over his 30 years on the Supreme Court. Here I would add that on race-based affirmative action in admissions, an issue we closely follow here at CEO, Kennedy could disappoint even while providing reasons to be optimistic. Consider his opinion for the Court two years ago in the University of Texas case upholding a racial admissions policy that should have been struck down. The ruling, however, was narrow and may have little precedential value. And Kennedy was clear about …

Good News: Trump Rescinds Obama’s “Affirmative Action” Guidance

Roger CleggRacial Preferences

On July 3, the Trump administration announced that it was rescinding Obama-era guidance on the use of race and ethnicity in student admissions (higher education) and assignments (K–12). This is good news. As I explained on National Review Online as the Obama statements were issued — here and here and here, for example — they misread the law and were bad policy as well. It’s not that complicated: As a policy matter, skin color and national origin should not play a role in deciding where a student can go to school. The costs of such discrimination overwhelm any claim of …

The Latest Affirmative Action Suit May Succeed Where Others Failed

Terry EastlandEducation

In case you’re coming late to the story: a lawsuit has been filed against Harvard College alleging racial discrimination against Asian American applicants in its admissions programs. The headline above invites the question of whether the case might spell the end of race preferences in admissions. After all, at some point, as Justice Sandra Day O’Connor pointed out, race-based preferences must have “a termination point.” They can’t go on forever. They are morally and legally discriminatory, and they make no sense in our multi-racial, multi-culture country. Maybe Harvard will settle before the trial in October and quit its racial admissions, …

Google and Mismatch

Roger CleggEmployment

The Washington Post ran an article recently on Google and its demographics. Most of it is devoted to discussing the company’s “diversity” efforts and its painfully slow progress in achieving the politically correct racial, ethnic, and gender balance it wants. Too many white and Asian men, not enough of everyone else. But fear not: The suits — does Google have “suits”? — acknowledge “we need to do more to achieve our desired diversity and inclusion outcomes,” so department heads will be “tasked with meeting intermediate milestones,” and the company has set as one of its “major goals” to “reach or …