Man who led fight to dismantle affirmative action files suits against law firm diversity programs

The conservative legal activist who led the fight to persuade the Supreme Court to end affirmative action in college admissions has now trained his sights on high-profile law firms and their diversity hiring programs.

Edward Blum, who leads the American Alliance for Equal Rights, filed two lawsuits on Tuesday: one in the Southern District of Florida against Morrison & Foerster LLP and another in the Northern District of Texas against Perkins Coie LLP.

He said the legal firms are violating the law by using skin color as a factor in awarding highly coveted fellowships to law school students they hire.

“The law abhors racial discrimination. The lawyers who help administer that law are supposed to abhor it too. The ethical rules punish lawyers who ‘engage in conduct in connection with the practice of law’ that discriminates ‘on account of race,’” the complaint filed against Morrison & Foerster LLP reads.

The Florida legal argument says the firm’s Keith Wetmore 1L Fellowship for Excellence, Diversity and Inclusion excludes certain applicants based on race. The positions, according to the filing, pay six-figure stipends.

“Yet applicants do not qualify unless they are ‘African American/Black, Latinx, Native Americans/Native Alaskans, and/or members of the LGBTQ+ community.’”

In his Texas lawsuit, Mr. Blum is targeting Perkins Coie LLP’s 1L diversity fellowship, which launched in 1991, and the 2L program that started in 2020. The applicants are said to be from underrepresented groups.

Neither law firm immediately returned a request for comment about the litigation.

Both lawsuits note that racial discrimination is never lawful. The Supreme Court ruled in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard this year that colleges can’t use race as part of admissions criteria, an Mr. Blum says neither can law firms.

“[SFFA v. Harvard] reaffirms that ‘[e]liminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.’ No racial discrimination is benign: It always ‘demeans the dignity and worth’ of every American ‘to be judged’ by his or her race ‘instead of by his or her own merit and essential qualities,’” the lawsuits read.

Race-infused affirmative action programs violate the Constitution’s guarantees of equal treatment, the Supreme Court ruled in June in a pair of monumental decisions striking down policies that major colleges and universities used to add more Black and Hispanic students to their ranks.

The ruling doesn’t ban the mention of race in applications or block a school from evaluating a candidate’s experiences with race, either as a personal hurdle or inspiration, as part of an admissions decision.

The court said schools can no longer defend policies that claim to try to find the right racial mix of students. Such policies reduce students to the color of their skin, the justices said in a 6-3 ruling striking down affirmative action policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The laws at issue in the high court cases involved the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Mr. Blum’s lawsuits against the legal firms point to the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which bars racial discrimination for contracts.

Josh Blackman, a professor at South Texas College of Law, said he thinks the cases will be successful.

“In the interim, there will be a lot of discovery that reveals how these firms expressly use race when hiring,” he said.

Mr. Blum said dozens of polls show that people don’t support using race as a factor in hiring or promotions.

“Excluding students from these esteemed fellowships because they are the wrong race is unfair, polarizing and illegal. Law firms that have racially-exclusive programs should immediately make them available to all applicants, regardless of their race,” he said.

“Race and ethnicity are attributes, not accomplishments. It is the hope of this organization, as well as most Americans, that these law firms end these racial restrictions and open these fellowships to all qualified applicants,” Mr. Blum said.

He cites an anonymous first-year White male student who would qualify for the fellowship but for his race in both cases.

The Florida lawsuit is pending before Judge Kathleen M. Williams, an Obama appointee, and the Texas case is pending before Magistrate Judge Renee H. Toliver.

• Stephen Dinan contributed to this report.