http://www.al.com/news/index.s...ml#incart_river_home

Justice Department officials are planning a new project to investigate and sue universities over affirmative action admissions policies they determine discriminate against white applicants, according to a U.S. government official.

The project will be based out of the department's civil rights division, which is now looking for lawyers interested in working on "investigations and possible litigation related to intentional race-based discrimination in college and university admissions," according to a person familiar with an internal announcement in the civil rights division.

Officials said that the project will not be run out of the civil rights division's Educational Opportunities Section where career Justice attorneys oversee cases on universities, but instead in the front office of the division. The project was first reported Tuesday night by the New York Times.

Justice Department spokeswoman Sarah Isgur Flores would not confirm the project and would only say "we don't comment on personnel issues," referring to the internal job position announcement.

A spokeswoman for the Education Department did not immediately respond late Tuesday night to inquiries about whether the agency would play a role in the effort to challenge affirmative action on college campuses.

But at least one key official has expressed skepticism of race-conscious admissions: Candice Jackson, acting head of the Education Department's Office for Civil Rights, has written that such policies dismiss "the very real prices paid by individual people who end up injured by affirmative action."

Two people familiar with the internal discussions at the Justice Department's civil rights division said that the move came after career staffers who specialize in education issues refused to work on the project out of concerns it was contrary to the office's long-running approach to civil rights in education opportunities. As a result, political leadership within the department decided to run the effort themselves, these people said.

"Yet again, the Sessions Justice Department, led by the political leadership and marginalizing the career employees, is changing course on a key civil rights issue," Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division under President Obama, said in a statement to The Washington Post.

Gupta, who is now president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, called the new project "an affront to our values as a country and the very mission of the civil rights division."

"Long-standing Supreme Court precedent has upheld the constitutionality and compelling state interest of these policies, and generations of Americans have benefited from richer, more inclusive institutions of higher education," Gupta said.

Anurima Bhargava, a former Obama administration official, called the move a "scare tactic" meant to unnerve colleges and universities.

"The goal here is to drum up a bunch of fear and intimidate schools who are trying to provide a pipeline to leadership for all Americans," said Bhargava, who served as chief of the educational opportunities section of the civil rights division at the Justice Department.

The Supreme Court has ruled repeatedly that schools have a compelling interest in creating a diverse student body and may use race as one of multiple factors in admissions decisions. The court endorsed that view as recently as June 2016, ruling 4 to 3 that a race-conscious admissions policy at the University of Texas was constitutional.

But critics of affirmative action believe that the high court's rulings have left an opening to challenge race-conscious policies, and cases are currently pending against Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Both cases allege that race-conscious admissions policies result in discrimination against Asian American applicants.

Another move in the right direction.

Heads of liberal identity politics-centric organizations just called AG Sessions Beelzebub.

About damned time somebody did something to put an end to this insanity! Hope the plans include jail time for the perps.

quote:

About damned time

About damned time is right.
Do they know that 'race-based discrimination' is race-based discrimination ... regardless of intent?
Do they know that 'race-based discrimination' is inherently demeaning to the people they claim to be helping?

Let's hope they go after sex based discrimination as well.

quote:

Originally posted by chellim1:
[QUOTE]About damned time

About damned time is right.
Do they know that 'race-based discrimination' is race-based discrimination ... regardless of intent?
=================================
Hell no! and do not care
Do they know that 'race-based discrimination' is inherently demeaning to the people they claim to be helping?
===============================
Hell no! and do not care

I don't understand how the SCOTUS has ruled in favor of this in the past.

From a rather old document, but I think it should apply today:

quote:

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.

How is the SCOTUS, not bound by 14th amendment to rule these policies as unconstitutional?

quote:

nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.

Lastly where in the constitution does it lay out the framework to promote diversity? I did a quick Google Search and can't find that part of the constitution.

Two of the individuals named in the OP's article...

Vanita Gupta, former head of the Justice Department's civil rights division under President Obama, and

Anurima Bhargava, a former Obama administration official

Anyone else noticing a theme here???

The group that should really be pissed are the Asians:

quote:

While it’s fair to say that part of this belief stems from speculation, the claim that Asians have it harder is not unwarranted. A 2009 study by the National Study of College Experience shows that an Asian applicant must score 140 points higher than White applicants, 320 points higher than Hispanic applicants, and 450 points higher than Black applicants on the SAT to be viewed in an equal light.

Asian admittance

How a 450 point delta between Asians and Blacks as been allowed is beyond me. While we play the diversity game, China and India are all about recruiting academic best.

A good first step.

The next step would be in employment hiring practices.

Sander and Taylor have long admired affirmative action's original goals, but after many years of studying racial preferences, they have reached a controversial but undeniable conclusion: that preferences hurt underrepresented minorities far more than they help them.

At the heart of affirmative action's failure is a simple phenomenon called mismatch. Using dramatic new data and numerous interviews with affected former students and university officials of color, the authors show how racial preferences often put students in competition with far better-prepared classmates, dooming many to fall so far behind that they can never catch up.

Mismatch largely explains why, even though black applicants are more likely to enter college than whites with similar backgrounds, they are far less likely to finish; why there are so few black and Hispanic professionals with science and engineering degrees and doctorates; why black law graduates fail bar exams at four times the rate of whites; and why universities accept relatively affluent minorities over working class and poor people of all races.

https://www.amazon.com/Mismatc...ce6e7328b547f471b351