Senate confirms first Black woman as judge on Northern Indiana federal court
A Gary native will be the first Black woman ever to sit as a judge on the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Indiana.
You must vote DEMOCRAT🐴 🔵 for ONE single reason; The GOP make WHITE ONLY COURTS 👨🏼⚖️ for 40+ YEARS
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Your Guide to Four Emerging Threats to the Voting Rights Act - Bolts
After years of being whittled away by federal judges, the Voting Rights Act unexpectedly survived an existential threat in 2023 when the U.S. Supreme Court upheld what’s left of the... Read More
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The last half of this clip really spells out a doomsday scenario we are walking down...
Is Edward Blum Done Suing Law Firms? | The American Lawyer
A profession struggling for more equitable representation confronts a legal activist who wants law firms to be colorblind.
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Is Edward Blum Done Suing Law Firms?
A profession struggling for more equitable representation confronts a legal activist who wants law firms to be colorblind.
After a U.S. Supreme Court win that ended affirmative action in college admissions, Edward Blum began targeting law firms in August.
Several law firms responded by canceling or modifying their diversity fellowships, opening them to all applicants.
Some law firm diversity professionals said Blum's skepticism of DEI is due to a misunderstanding of how firms go about it.
Edward Blum, the conservative legal activist who this year helped dismantle affirmative action in college admissions and prompted law firms to open diversity fellowships to all applicants, may not be done suing law firms after all.
After Blum dropped a recent lawsuit against Winston & Strawn, Bloomberg Law reported Blum said he was done suing law firms. Blum meant he was done for now. “If we learn of a law firm that has a policy similar to the ones we sued and they have not changed it, and a plaintiff wants to apply for that position who is disqualified because of their race, we will file a lawsuit against that law firm,” Blum said in a recent interview with The American Lawyer.
Data from NALP, the American Bar Association and the American Lawyer indicate that the legal profession does not reflect American society in terms of who ends up becoming a lawyer, with some races, ethnicities, gender identities and sexual orientations tending to have better luck than others. That systemic prejudices are to blame, and that the profession’s leading law firms ought to break down barriers that enforce them, is a broadly held opinion in Big Law today.
It is not the opinion of Blum, however. He was already instrumental in getting part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act overturned and ended affirmative action in college admissions through eight trips to the U.S. Supreme Court by the time he filed complaints against Perkins Coie and Morrison & Foerster in August.
The affirmative action case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, provided what Blum characterized as a new judicial doctrine on the influence of “racial preferences” at law firms and in other arenas such as higher education, public education and voting.
“If that is forbidden in higher education then I think most law firms have recognized that other entities outside of higher education that use racial classifications and preferences to achieve diversity are suspect,” Blum said. “That’s the whole ball of energy behind what has happened with the law firms.”
He filed a third complaint against Winston in October, with each lawsuit alleging discrimination against straight white men who would have applied for minority fellowships but for the fellowship’s preference toward minorities.
In statements to the media and letters to colleges that used affirmative action, Blum has stated that societal participation is a series of zero-sum games, where any opportunity specifically allocated to people from underrepresented groups is an opportunity taken away from the majority.
Asked whether he cared about the lack of diversity in the legal profession, Blum responded that civil rights laws do not accommodate attempts to achieve racial proportionality. “Policies that aim to reach racial proportionality that reflects the overall racial makeup of the nation have always been illegal,” he said.
Blum got what he wanted out of the lawsuits. In October, he dropped his suit against Perkins after the firm canceled a diversity fellowship that sought applicants from underrepresented groups and replaced it with a race-neutral one. The same month, he dropped his suit against Morrison & Foerster after the firm agreed to not use membership in a historically underrepresented group in its application criteria. And in December, he dropped the Winston lawsuit after the firm offered the same remedy.
Blum and his nonprofit, the American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER), also sent letters to Adams and Reese, Hunton Andrews Kurth, Fox Rothschild and Susman Godfrey threatening litigation if the firms didn’t make similar changes. Adams and Reese canceled its minority fellowship after receiving the letter.
Fox Rothschild updated its criteria to state its fellowship would be awarded on a variety of factors including “commitment to diversity and inclusion efforts in the legal community.” In an October response letter, Hunton said it was unable to answer Blum’s questions about its 1L Diversity Clerkship but might make changes “in response to legal considerations or otherwise.”
Susman recently increased the size of its 1L Diversity Fellowship and the size of its Susman Godfrey Prize, a scholarship for law students of color. However, the firm also opened its 1L Diversity Fellowship to all first-years who experienced hardships or disadvantages and ended the summer clerkship formerly attached to the Susman Godfrey Prize, adding that it would provide mentorship to winners.
“All of them made substantial changes to their programs which were sufficient for AAER to suspend any plans to bring legal actions,” Blum said.
Blum’s career in legal activism has relied on finding the right plaintiffs. If another person comes forward who feels disadvantaged by a policy that Blum’s team finds actionable, the litigation will continue, he said.
Beyond Minority Fellowships
Blum’s lawsuits and legal threats prompted a broad review of law firms’ DEI efforts, in part because of fears that Blum’s skepticism of diversity programs—and financial support from wealthy conservative families and dark money groups—would lead him to attack other areas of DEI.
Indeed, Blum characterized DEI efforts such as training on white privilege as “polarizing” and “disunifying,” although not illegal. But other areas of law firm DEI could be actionable in certain circumstances, he added. “It becomes fuzzy when that policy is open to everyone but the goal is to create a racially diverse institution or employee pool, how that’s done has to be analyzed on a case-by-case basis,” Blum told The American Lawyer. “Using racial classifications and preferences exclusively will virtually always be actionable.”
Some law firm diversity professionals said Blum’s skepticism of DEI is due to a misunderstanding of how firms go about it. Diversity is about far more than race and ethnicity, several chief diversity officers said, underscoring the fact that a straight white man could be afforded opportunities allocated for diverse attorneys due disability status or veteran status.
Blum also signaled that he may sue law firms that use new criteria in diversity fellowship applications that act as a proxy for race, something he accused Winston & Strawn of doing in his complaint against the firm.
In an October response letter, Winston Chicago managing partner Cardelle Spangler, a labor and employment lawyer, fired back at Blum. “Note that your implication that the terms ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘historically underrepresented’ necessarily refer to race is baseless,” Spangler said.
Part 2:
“Just alleging it doesn’t make it true,” added Reed Smith labor and employment chair Tyree Jones about Blum’s proxy allegations. “There are white men who have suffered socioeconomic disadvantage.”
And yet, some opportunities in Big Law are zero sum—there are only so many diversity fellowship spots and scholarship opportunities, after all. With Blum and conservative legislators emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions this June in Students for Fair Admissions—which Blum said highlighted the “unconstitutionality” of seeking racial balancing in corporations and law firms, too—diversity leaders at law firms know that future DEI initiatives may face similar scrutiny.
“While I’d like to think that the tweaking of the language will satisfy the people who are complaining about it, I think that their issue is reflective of a broader concern among certain people that these opportunities are zero sum, and everything that is given to one person is something that is being taken away from somebody else,” said Shelley Smith, the CDO at New Jersey-based Archer & Greiner.
More accurately, Smith said, DEI efforts have increased the size of the playing field, with more people becoming qualified for opportunities. “Demographic groups of people who have historically only had to compete with each other now have to compete with a broader group of people and that makes every opportunity more competitive,” Smith said.
On whether his litigants—straight white men—were disadvantaged in society, Blum said, “Perhaps, but perhaps not.” He affirmed his belief that racially exclusionary policies should draw litigation, but was unsure on the underlying question. “Do white men have a disadvantage? Do African American men have an advantage? I don’t know and I don’t have an opinion on that,” he said.
Whatever Blum believes, his litigants feel they’ve been wronged. “The real issue the AAER raises in its lawsuits is they believe straight white males are being discriminated against,” Jones said. “They have every right to raise those claims and try to prove that in court, but that shouldn’t chill the objective of ensuring opportunity for all in a profession where the numbers still reveal that opportunity hasn’t been available to all.”
‘Harmful for All of Our Endeavors’
Most Big Law firms aren’t walking away from DEI commitments or wholly cutting programs in response to the Blum lawsuits, according to interviews with numerous law firm CDOs and DEI consultants in recent months. But the lasting impact of Blum’s 2023 litigation remains to be seen.
In a July interview with the New York Times, Blum said the SFFA decision left it up to colleges to create “fair and equitable admissions policies that do not discriminate on the basis of race.”
Asked what he thought the impact of his litigation against Big Law firms may be, Blum again emphasized the need for better recruitment. “Maybe we should recruit at Texas Tech, maybe we should recruit at Wyoming State [University of Wyoming] or the University of Maine or the South Texas College of Law,” he said. “Those schools have significantly more minorities, and those kids come from less advantaged economic backgrounds than Harvard or Stanford or Chicago. That would comport with the law.”
For Jones, the backlash has helped align lawyers and law firms behind a common goal of improving diverse attorney representation. “It really energized or reenergized law firms’ commitment to DEIB,” he said, referencing the acronym for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Already, the SFFA decision and suits against law firms have created more work for people who work to increase diversity in the profession. After the SFFA decision dropped, the New York City Bar Association began fielding calls from legal employers who had partnered with the association to offer summer internships for diverse New York City public high school students and 1L fellowships for diverse law students.
“They were writing in saying, ‘Hey, is this still legal? Can we still do this?’” said Tanya Martinez-Gallinucci, executive director of DEIB at the NYC Bar Association, adding that the programs never selected applicants on the basis of race. “That kind of misinformation is harmful for all of our endeavors.”
Speaking from her office in New York City, Martinez-Gallinucci noted that 69 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the nation’s most diverse city has the country’s most segregated public school system.
“We never achieved the goals of Brown v. Board, and the expectation that they would have fixed everything with affirmative action in 20 years is ridiculous,” she said, referring to when Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion in the SFFA case, referenced the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger ruling that proposed affirmative action would no longer be necessary in 25 years.
“It’s a sham, and I hope everyone can see it’s a sham,” she concluded.
“Just alleging it doesn’t make it true,” added Reed Smith labor and employment chair Tyree Jones about Blum’s proxy allegations. “There are white men who have suffered socioeconomic disadvantage.”
And yet, some opportunities in Big Law are zero sum—there are only so many diversity fellowship spots and scholarship opportunities, after all. With Blum and conservative legislators emboldened by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action in college admissions this June in Students for Fair Admissions—which Blum said highlighted the “unconstitutionality” of seeking racial balancing in corporations and law firms, too—diversity leaders at law firms know that future DEI initiatives may face similar scrutiny.
“While I’d like to think that the tweaking of the language will satisfy the people who are complaining about it, I think that their issue is reflective of a broader concern among certain people that these opportunities are zero sum, and everything that is given to one person is something that is being taken away from somebody else,” said Shelley Smith, the CDO at New Jersey-based Archer & Greiner.
More accurately, Smith said, DEI efforts have increased the size of the playing field, with more people becoming qualified for opportunities. “Demographic groups of people who have historically only had to compete with each other now have to compete with a broader group of people and that makes every opportunity more competitive,” Smith said.
On whether his litigants—straight white men—were disadvantaged in society, Blum said, “Perhaps, but perhaps not.” He affirmed his belief that racially exclusionary policies should draw litigation, but was unsure on the underlying question. “Do white men have a disadvantage? Do African American men have an advantage? I don’t know and I don’t have an opinion on that,” he said.
Whatever Blum believes, his litigants feel they’ve been wronged. “The real issue the AAER raises in its lawsuits is they believe straight white males are being discriminated against,” Jones said. “They have every right to raise those claims and try to prove that in court, but that shouldn’t chill the objective of ensuring opportunity for all in a profession where the numbers still reveal that opportunity hasn’t been available to all.”
‘Harmful for All of Our Endeavors’
Most Big Law firms aren’t walking away from DEI commitments or wholly cutting programs in response to the Blum lawsuits, according to interviews with numerous law firm CDOs and DEI consultants in recent months. But the lasting impact of Blum’s 2023 litigation remains to be seen.
In a July interview with the New York Times, Blum said the SFFA decision left it up to colleges to create “fair and equitable admissions policies that do not discriminate on the basis of race.”
Asked what he thought the impact of his litigation against Big Law firms may be, Blum again emphasized the need for better recruitment. “Maybe we should recruit at Texas Tech, maybe we should recruit at Wyoming State [University of Wyoming] or the University of Maine or the South Texas College of Law,” he said. “Those schools have significantly more minorities, and those kids come from less advantaged economic backgrounds than Harvard or Stanford or Chicago. That would comport with the law.”
For Jones, the backlash has helped align lawyers and law firms behind a common goal of improving diverse attorney representation. “It really energized or reenergized law firms’ commitment to DEIB,” he said, referencing the acronym for diversity, equity, inclusion and belonging.
Already, the SFFA decision and suits against law firms have created more work for people who work to increase diversity in the profession. After the SFFA decision dropped, the New York City Bar Association began fielding calls from legal employers who had partnered with the association to offer summer internships for diverse New York City public high school students and 1L fellowships for diverse law students.
“They were writing in saying, ‘Hey, is this still legal? Can we still do this?’” said Tanya Martinez-Gallinucci, executive director of DEIB at the NYC Bar Association, adding that the programs never selected applicants on the basis of race. “That kind of misinformation is harmful for all of our endeavors.”
Speaking from her office in New York City, Martinez-Gallinucci noted that 69 years after Brown v. Board of Education, the nation’s most diverse city has the country’s most segregated public school system.
“We never achieved the goals of Brown v. Board, and the expectation that they would have fixed everything with affirmative action in 20 years is ridiculous,” she said, referring to when Justice John Roberts, in his majority opinion in the SFFA case, referenced the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger ruling that proposed affirmative action would no longer be necessary in 25 years.
“It’s a sham, and I hope everyone can see it’s a sham,” she concluded.
LIVE: Houston NAACP addresses claims Black women judges, candidates being targeted
Houston NAACP President, Dr. James Dixon addresses claims Black women judges and candidates for Judgeship in Harris County are being targeted, unjustly publi...
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Houston NAACP rallies behind Black female judicial candidates facing unfair challenges, calling for justice and equality in local elections
Houston's NAACP joins forces with Black female judicial candidates, decrying alleged racial bias and unjust challenges in an impassioned call for justice and equality in local elections.
Houston NAACP, other leaders say lawsuits against Black female judicial candidates are 'unjust and unfair'
Damali KeithFebruary 15, 2024 6:43PM
Black women judicial candidates feel targeted
The head of Houston's NAACP is standing with several Black female judicial candidates who feel they're being targeted and unfairly challenged. FOX 26's Damali Keith has more on the story.
HOUSTON - The head of Houston's NAACP is standing with several Black female judicial candidates who feel they're being targeted and unfairly challenged.
Several Black women, who are running for judicial seats in Harris County, have been taken to court in an effort to have them removed from the ballot and a number of area leaders gathered at the Houston NAACP on Thursday afternoon calling it unjust.
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"Attorney Lillian Alexander has been challenged on the ballot twice, TaKasha Francis as well. Amber Boyd-Cora was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court. I was challenged all the way to the Supreme Court," explains Federal Judge Erica Hughes.
"When the Supreme Court denied that mandamus, that was a win. That was a win for the people that put me on the ballot and that was also a win. Our election process works," says Boyd-Cora.
Everyone from state representatives to Houston's NAACP President Bishop James Dixon are standing with the 13 Black Judicial candidates who believe they're being targeted, not because they're ineligible to run, but because they're Black and female.
"It's offensive to me. So Democratic Party, I'm challenging you to stop just asking people to vote for you and support Black women. I think it's really interesting that they're not going after other people as democrats," adds Rep. Jolanda Jones.
City leaders call lawsuits against judges 'unjust'
Houston area leaders stand with several Black women who are running for judicial seats here in Harris County who have been taken to court. The group calls the lawsuits unjust and unwarranted.
"Someone said to me, they hate this has become a racial matter, and I want to say justice is not racial. Justice is about what's right and what's wrong," said Dixon.
"Not just African American women, Caucasian women, Hispanic women, Vietnamese women, people in general that are trying to change a system that some are so used to it being a certain way. When you come into dark places with light, people don't like that," says 338th District Judge Ramona Franklin.
"We're talking about Black women who have been practicing for more than a decade and the question continues to be raised about whether or not we're qualified, and I don't see similar questions for non-Black women," adds judicial candidate Brandi J. Croffie.
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"I've been practicing over 24 years. I currently teach appellate litigation here at Thurgood Marshall School of Law. We're told we start at the same starting line as everyone else, but then there are so many obstacles that we're required to overcome," says judicial candidate Brendetta Anthony Scott.
"Diversity is so important. It's our superpower, but it's going to require change and there's a certain population that doesn't like the idea of change," adds judicial candidate Ysidra Kyles.
The Chair of the Harris County Democratic Party says in every election there are challenges filed by and against candidates of all backgrounds, and he says this election cycle is no different.
"I've been practicing 30 plus years. I'm a 30-plus year veteran trial attorney. I've never seen this many challenges to Black females," says judicial candidate Velda Renita Faulkner.
The leaders and the women say they are standing together to stop what they call a false narrative that can easily get out of control.
"There's going to be other elections. We need to make sure this isn't repeated," says Boyd-Cora.