Most Americans aren’t interested in seeking special treatment—but they rightfully expect equal treatment. Yet too often, colleges and universities sidestep civil rights protections...
Most Americans aren’t interested in seeking special treatment—but they rightfully expect equal treatment.
Yet too often, colleges and universities sidestep civil rights protections to advance discriminatory goals in admissions, hiring, and other opportunities.
Last week, my colleagues and I filed a federal lawsuit on behalf of the Californians for Equal Rights Foundation (CFER) and one of its student members, Kai Peters—a University of California, San Diego junior challenging UCSD’s so-called “private” race-based scholarship fund.
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In 1983, UCSD founded the Black Alumni Scholarship Fund (BASF) as a state-run, race-based scholarship program, but after California voters passed Proposition 209 in 1996—banning discrimination in public education—UCSD simply outsourced the program to an off-campus nonprofit.
Despite the so-called “private” nature of the reimagined BASF, there are numerous examples of explicit collusion, ranging from the sharing of admissions data and students’ contact information to an outsized presence of UCSD staff on BASF’s board. Brazenly, BASF has even openly bragged in its marketing materials about its ability to circumvent Proposition 209.
One of the key legal foundations of our challenge is UCSD’s violation of a more-than-150-year-old statute originally known as the Ku Klux Klan Act—or Third Enforcement Act.
Now known as Section 1985, this 19th-century legislation was originally enacted to protect Americans from the government outsourcing racial discrimination to private parties. As we see at UCSD and universities across the country, these protections remain vitally important to this day.
The bottom line is that it’s wrong for students, like Kai, to be discriminated against and denied opportunities based on immutable characteristics like race or sex.
While it’s a shame that this bureaucratic bait-and-switch has gone on for as long as it has, I’m optimistic that if we’re successful, future classes of UCSD students won’t have to face the same discrimination that Kai and his peers face today.
Check out our case page
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to learn more about Kai’s story and the disturbing depths of the UCSD-BASF collusion—and consider submitting your case
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for review if you’ve fallen victim to unconstitutional discrimination.
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PLF’s latest research
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reveals that institutions of higher education across the country are also regularly pressured into taking discriminatory actions by quasi-governmental accrediting bodies—notably, the American Bar Association (ABA).
As the only federally approved accreditor of juris doctor (JD) programs, the ABA has been found aggressively pressuring law schools to adopt discriminatory policies and practices to achieve the ABA’s race- and sex-based diversity goals.
This form of discrimination-by-proxy is not only morally repugnant—it’s also blatantly unconstitutional.
However, despite recent federal executive action pausing enforcement of certain ABA standards, the report warns that only congressional legislation can end these unlawful mandates for good—and we’ll be watching closely to see if Congress answers that call.
Thank you for standing with us in support of the Constitution and against discrimination in all its ugly forms.
Stay tuned for updates on Kai’s fight and others like it.
Until then,
Jack Brown
Attorney
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, for regular updates from the front lines of our fight against government overreach.
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