The American Civil Rights Project

Today, along with the Center for Equal Opportunity, we wrote to the ABA Business Law Section, raising issues with the legality of a section program that appears to discriminate based on race, s*x, and other prohibited factors in qualifying and disqualifying applicants for employment as judicial clerks.

The Diversity Clerkship Program secures employment in judicial chambers for its beneficiaries. It provides compensation for that employment in the form of a stipend. As advertised by the ABA BLS, these positions expressly serve a training function, providing a “background [that] will prove invaluable to a career in business law, whether it be litigation or transactional work.”

The Diversity Clerkship Program automatically qualifies for consideration for these coveted positions applicants “of color” and women, while allowing other applicants to qualify only if they assert an LBGTQ+ identification, a disability, or a history of overcoming social or economic disadvantages. That structure appears to bring the Diversity Clerkship Program into violation of numerous applicable laws, including at least 42 USC Section 1981 (one of the main surviving provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1866) and Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, as well as potentially the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, the federal judiciary’s policy on equal opportunity, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972.

The ACR Project and CEO believe it to be particularly important that organizations as associated with and committed to the rule of law as the ABA BLS and America’s judiciary live up to our national consensus against discrimination and comply with long-standing nondiscrimination laws. The ABA shouldn't violate that kind of foundational nondiscrimination laws. And it definitely shouldn't violate those laws in how it places employees into the chambers of America's judges.

Read the full letter!

The ACR Project and Center for Equal Opportunity Raise Seeming Illegality of ABA Business Law Section Diversity Clerkship Program | American Civil Rights Project Today, along with the Center for Equal Opportunity, we wrote […]

The ACR Project filed at the Supreme Court an amicus brief supporting two Indiana school system’s cert. petition. You can see the full brief, below.

The petition asks the Court to resolve the deepening circuit split concerning the impact of the Equal Protection Clause and Title IX on federal funding recipients’ maintenance of separate bathrooms, locker rooms, and showers for the two biological s*xes. Our brief addresses, specifically, how the Seventh Circuit Court of Appeals’s interpretation of Title IX is remarkably misguided, misreading the Court’s Bostock opinion to deny school systems the flexibility to handle the situations their transgender students face as specific circumstances require and to impose a one-size-fits-all approach untethered to any enactment with democratic legitimacy.

ACR Project Files Amicus Brief Supporting Cert Petition of Indiana School Systems in Transgender Bathrooms Case | American Civil Rights Project The ACR Project filed at the Supreme Court an amicus […]