“The University of Michigan and its Michigan Law Review Association are facing a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences over alleged racial and sexual discrimination in the law review’s selection process,” reports The College Fix:
The lawsuit accuses the law review of engaging in “corrupt and illegal scheme of race and sex preferences” with the permission of the school.
The pending lawsuit, filed by America First Legal Foundation, alleges the Michigan Law Review considers race and sex in selecting student editors and articles, which violates the Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. Michigan law also prohibits discrimination on the basis of race in higher education.
The plaintiffs are three tenured law professors who are all white, heterosexual men….The review employs two different review tracks for choosing new members: 40 percent of applicants are chosen solely based on application exercise scores, while the other 60 percent go through a “holistic review” that includes personal statements and other writing samples….Stories authored by preferred groups are favored over objectively stronger submissions from heterosexual, non-transgender, white men.
The complaint names both the University of Michigan and the Michigan Law Review as defendants, listing that the Review maintains editorial policies and standards that give preference to women and/or racial minorities through essay prompts that encourage revealing these characteristics….FASORP also alleged the University unlawfully delegates authority to the Michigan Law Review, a supposedly independent student organization, while still providing financial support and being a prerequisite for joining.
The Michigan state constitution bans race-based affirmative action, in that it includes a categorical ban on not just “discrimination” but also “preferences” based on race in public education, public employment, and government contracting. The University of Michigan has flouted this constitutional provision ever since it was adopted by Michigan voters in 2006 as Proposal 2 (adding Article I, section 26 of the Michigan state constitution). The University of Michigan has continued to have different average SAT scores and grades in admissions for the black students it admits compared to the white and Asian students it admits, and this has persisted even after that state constitutional provision banning racial preferences was added.
In 2003, the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan’s College of Literature, Science, and the Arts had violated the constitution, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, and 42 U.S.C. 1981 by giving blacks large, mechanical racial preferences in admissions. But it also ruled that the University of Michigan’s law school had not violated federal law by using a race-conscious, supposedly holistic review process for admitting law schools that took into account students’ race.
