Civil rights community, DOJ clash over race-based college admissions
7th August 2017 · 0 Comments
The civil rights community is on high alert and wasted no time in firing warning shots at the Trump administration after a report by The New York Times on Tuesday that said the U.S. Department of Justice is laying the foundation for am effort to do away with race-based admissions at the nation’s colleges and universities.
The New York Times cited an internal document from the DOJ’s Civil Rights Division that is reportedly seeking attorneys who are interested in “investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions.”
Last summer in Fisher v. University of Texas, the U.S. Supreme Court decided in a 4-3 ruling that the use of race as a factor in college admissions is lawful.
The battle over affirmative action in college admissions is one that has been waged many times since the 1970s, with the makeup of the high court becoming a highly charged issue every time a new president is elected and there is a pending vacancy on the high court.
In a statement released Wednesday afternoon, Congressional Black Caucus Chairman Cedric Richmond (D-La.) said the DOJ is expanding its current assault on communities of color with its plan, as reported by The New York Times, to investigate affirmative action admission policies at universities that discriminate against white students.
“Instead of standing up for himself to a president who called him ‘very weak’ and ‘beleaguered,’ Attorney General Sessions has chosen to pick on minority students who are in pursuit of a college education, opportunity and the American Dream,” Richmond said, referring to President Trump’s recent criticisms of the nation’s top cop.
“In doing so, he’s appealing to the lowest common denominator in our country, people who wrongly believe that minority students who benefit from efforts to promote diversity and equality are ignorant, undeserving and unqualified.”
The news reports sparked outrage amongst civil rights groups.
On Wednesday, Richmond accused Sessions of re-litigating the United States Supreme Court case last year that upheld affirmative action policies at the University of Texas at Austin in which the court said race could be considered along with merit-based criteria in admissions decisions.
“Now, Attorney General Sessions wants to turn back the clock to the darker days in our history when minority students couldn’t get into the schools of their choice because of racist admissions practices,” he said.
In a statement earlier in the day Wednesday, a Department of Justice (DOJ) official said the document was a “personnel posting” and “does not reflect a new policy or program or any changes to longstanding DOJ policy.”
“Whenever there’s a credible allegation of discrimination on the basis of race, the department will look into it,” the official said.
“By assembling a team of attorneys in the front office of the Civil Rights Division to focus on so-called ‘intentional race-based discrimination,’ this Justice Department is laying the groundwork to attack policies that help promote racial diversity at colleges and universities,” Kristen Clarke, president and executive director of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, said in a statement.
Clarke noted that this isn’t the first time Attorney General Jeff Sessions has tried to curtail affirmative action policies.
“He has a clear record of hostility to racial diversity,” she said. “We will not stand by idly as this administration continues to hijack and obstruct this Division’s core civil rights mission.”
“Diversity benefits communities, schools, and students from all backgrounds, especially those historically-underserved,” John King, president and CEO of the Education Trust and former education secretary under Obama, said in a statement Wednesday morning. “This is a principle affirmed by the Supreme Court and well understood in the higher education sector and business world.
“I am deeply disheartened that the Administration appears to be taking a hard line against efforts to increase campus diversity rather than focusing on addressing the persistent opportunity gaps facing students of color and low-income students,” King added.”
“The idea that the Justice Department would sue colleges over their inclusive policies is an affront to fairness and sends a dangerous signal that it will no longer work to protect the most vulnerable,” Dennis Parker, director of the American Civil Liberties Union, said in a statement last week. “It would mark an alarming shift in direction that threatens the hard-fought progress made by civil rights advocates and the department itself over the past decades. The Supreme Court has made it clear that it is constitutional to appropriately consider race as one of many factors in college admissions. We will be monitoring closely.”
“Affirmative action is rooted in our nation’s fundamental commitment to equality, a commitment this Administration woefully lacks and has expressed hostility towards,” Sherrilyn Ifill, president and director-counsel of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., said in a statement.
Ifill said this is just the latest in a string of attacks from the Justice Department on civil rights, including LGBT discrimination, voter suppression and endorsing police violence.
“We will bring the full force of the law if this Justice Department attempts to resegregate our institutions of higher learning.”
“Once again, we in the civil rights community find our progress under attack by the Sessions-led Justice Department and the current administration,” National Urban League President and CEO Marc H. Morial said in a statement Wednesday. “News reports that Attorney General Jeff Sessions intends to challenge the 2016 Supreme Court ruling upholding the consideration of race in the college admissions process, coupled with all the other assaults waged on civil rights that he was sworn to protect just six months ago, crystallizes Sessions’ disdain for the advancement of communities of color. We fully condemn any effort by the current Department of Justice to undermine affirmative action in college admissions, taking us back to a period when African Americans did not have equal and fair access to higher education. The National Urban League will do all it can to support our legal defense partners to ensure that our progress and civil rights are and continue to be protected.”
This article originally published in the August 7, 2017 print edition of The Louisiana Weekly newspaper.
