EVANSTON, Ill. — A group of conservatives has filed a lawsuit against Northwestern University, alleging the university’s laws school is using Affirmative Action to favor women and minorities over White men when it comes to hiring and law review member selection.
An attorney representing the group that filed the suit said race and sex shouldn’t play a role when it comes to making those decisions.
“Let’s not care at all about the sex or the race of the person, whether Black, white, brown, whatever. It just shouldn’t matter and it’s illegal to consider those criteria when you’re making those decisions in a context of higher education,” said attorney Chris Hilton with Stone Hilton law firm.
The Supreme Court a year ago struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
Hilton, attorney Jonathan Mitchell and America First Legal, operated by former President Trump administrators, are representing the group called Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP).
The lawsuit states that “for at least the last 12 years, since the installation of then-Dean Daniel Rodriguez, the leadership of Northwestern Law School has propagated and enforced a mandate to hire as many non-white and non-male faculty candidates as possible.”
In a statement, the university vowed to defend its case, saying: “Northwestern Pritzker School of Law is among the top law schools in the country, and we are proud of their outstanding faculty.”
Hilton said other universities around the country can expect similar lawsuits.
“This is the first lawsuit that we’ve filed, but again these problems aren’t unique to Northwestern,” Hilton said. “What we hope happens next is Northwestern approaches us to reach a resolution to end these hiring practices with respect to the law review.
FASORP has been unsuccessful in similar suits against NYU Law Review and the Harvard Law Review.