NEW!!:  Please don’t get rid of the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995.  It helps discourage devil worship and other creepy crawlies.  (I’m not kidding … not entirely anyway.)

I LOVE A HERO:  And so does the Carnegie Hero Fund.  The Fund, founded by Andrew Carnegie, “awards the Carnegie Medal to individuals in the United States and Canada who risk death or serious physical injury to an extraordinary degree saving or attempting to save the lives of others.”

Thank you, Andrew Carnegie for helping to foster a culture where heroism is valued.  But most of all, thank you to those individuals (yes, they are mostly men, but there was woman among this group and a boy) who instinctively came to the rescue of their fellow human being.  God bless you (and, to the men among you, God bless your toxic masculinity).

COLLEGE FIX:  “Top Conservative Civil Rights Advocates Seek Repeal of Minority-Serving Institutions Programs.”  (Original Letter here.)

CHANGE:  UConn Med School Drops Mandatory DEI-infused Hippocratic Oath.

AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?:  In “How Trump Can Ensure Fair Admissions,” Kristen Shapiro has an excellent suggestion:  Require schools to publish and report admissions data in a way that would make it much easier for the federal government to detect race discrimination.

My colleagues and I had a number of similar (but not identical) ideas when I first joined the Commission on Civil Rights.  But it was around the tail-end of the GWBush Administration and the beginnings of the Obama Administration.  And it was pre-SFFA. Our ideas didn’t have a snowball’s chance in hell then.  But maybe things are different now.

WAIT, THIS ISN’T AN APRIL FOOLS JOKE?:  “U Portland theology majors no longer have to take ‘Biblical Texts’–can take ‘queer’ class instead.“

I’M TOLD THE TRUMP ADMINISTRATION IS FOCUSED ON DISMANTLING DISPARATE IMPACT LIABILITY:  That’s great!  My advice is to focus first on demolishing the argument that Title VI’s regulations impose disparate impact liability on federal funding recipients.  No, they don’t, and if they do, they are beyond the scope of the power of any executive branch agency.  Once they’ve gotten that far, it may be easier to persuade the Supreme Court that disparate impact liability as first applied in Griggs v. Duke Power Co. (1971) was wrongheaded from the start and needs to be ditched.  It has caused harm to everyone.  A good rule of thumb is that a legal doctrine that presumptively outlaws everything can’t be good.

HOT!:  Why are more and more families opting for alternatives to public schools for their children?  (It’s because they’re not crazy.)

HERE’S WHAT THE NATIONAL SCIENCE FOUNDATION FUNDS:  The level of woke jargon is very high here:

Despite well-intentioned university efforts to support Black undergraduate STEM students, policy and practice reforms run the risk of not appropriately benefiting all Black people due to pervasive, deficit-based assumptions about Black racial identities and the types of structural engagement needed to advance holistic, racial well-being in transformative and sustainable ways. Stated simply, STEM contexts do not adequately support Black undergraduate STEM students because STEM educators and practitioners remain unsure of what Blackness means for individuals, thereby constraining true racial equity endeavors. Contemporary literature regarding race posits instead that embodiment(s) of Blackness differ across multiple dimensions and axes, including ethnic identity (e.g., African American, Caribbean American, Nigerian American), place identity (e.g., South, Midwest), and generational identity (e.g., first-generation, second-generation, third plus generation). Black students from different ethnic and generational identities having varied perceptions of the racial climate and understandings of their STEM experiences. Recognizing the scope of Blackness and its implications for creating and sustaining holistic, heterogenous conceptions of racial equity in STEM, the team will establish a collaborative network among six institutions (two HBCUS, two PWIs, one majority Black institution, and one HSI) located across the Mid-Atlantic, Southeast, Southwest, and Midwest regions of the US to study how Black undergraduate STEM students? notions of Blackness vary with respect to these dimensions. … (Rest of Abstract here.)

This project–entitled “Examining Blackness in Postsecondary STEM Education through a Multidimensional-Multiplicative Lens”–fetched $1,633,132.00.  So far only $767,25 has been disbursed.

SHOT IN THE DARK:  ATTENTION TRUMP ADMINISTRATION LAWYERS:  Don’t let anybody tell you that the regulations that have been issued under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibit disparate impact based on race.  The argument in this article is made in the context of school discipline, but it applies broadly.

MANNY KLAUSNER, RIP:  I learned yesterday evening that Manny Klausner has passed away at the age of 85.  He was a wonderfully optimistic soul and a great ally in the fight for liberty and equal protection under the law–the happiest of warriors.  It was impossible not to love him.  More on Manny here.

MAN’S BEST FRIEND:  RATS!!!:  National Geographic reports that in Africa, rats are used to detect tuberculosis:

Carolina is an African giant pouched rat who can screen 100 sputum (i.e phlegm) samples for tuberculosis in 20 minutes—much faster than a human, who takes four days to process the same amount of information with a microscope. And she’s part of a cohort of 40 rats belonging to nonprofit APOPO who are helping to combat the tuberculosis epidemic in Tanzania and Ethiopia.

According to the article, rats can be used to detect land mines too.

RINGSIDE AT THE RECKONING:  “Congress has created programs that dole out money to colleges that admit blacks and Hispanics at or above a fixed percentage.”  Yes, that’s unconstitutional.

HERE’S YOUR CHANCE TO HELP THE U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION TO DEAL WITH DEI-STYLE HARASSMENT IN SCHOOLS:  The Department of Education has set up a web site entitled “enddei.ed.gov.”  It says:

The U.S. Department of Education is committed to ensuring all students have access to meaningful learning free of divisive ideologies and indoctrination.  This submission form is an outlet for students, parents, teachers, and the broader community to report illegal discriminatory practices at institutions of learning.  The Department of Education will utilize community submissions to identify potential areas for investigation.

I should caution that not everything that is “divisive” is illegal.  Nor is everything that might be classified as “indoctrination.”  But Title VI, which prohibits race, color, and national origin discrimination by federal funding recipients has long been interpreted to prohibit conduct that rises to the level of racial, color, or national origin harassment.  Some of the DEI training and general DEI activity rises to that level.  If you have a story to tell, now would be a good time to tell it.  The information may be valuable to the officials there in sorting out what is and what isn’t an actual violation of the law.

NEW TREASURE OF SIERRA MADRE:  Peter Wood:  “Minority Serving Institutions Are a Modern Illusion of Equity.”

ATTENTION TRUMP ADMINISTRATION:  Wenyuan Wu:  “Accrediting Agencies Have Long Required Racial Preferences.  Civil Rights Commissioners Are Now Pushing Back.”

A bit more here.

HERE’S A BILLION DOLLARS FOR YOU, MR. MUSK:  Yesterday, Pete Kirsanow, Dan Morenoff and I sent a letter to Congressional Leaders about the unconstitutional Minority Serving Institution programs.  Did you know that if at least 25% of a college or university’s students are Hispanic, it is eligible for a pile of money that schools with less than 25% cannot access?  There is no requirement that the school prove that either it or its students have ever been discriminated against on account of race or ethnicity.  Absurd and unconstitutional.

EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT, EXCELLENT: Affirmatively Affirming Fair Housing (AFFH) is being ditched:  “Trump Kills an Intrusive Housing Rule, Again.”

DEAR TRUMP ADMINISTRATION:  It’s time to turn your attention to the problem of disparate impact liability.  There is no such thing as the rule of law when everything is presumptively illegal.

HOT! HOT! HOT!:  My Commission on Civil Rights colleague Pete Kirsanow and I wrote this letter to Senator Bill Cassidy urging him to spearhead legislation that would ban accreditors from using “diversity standards” to bully schools into violating the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (2023).

Supreme Court decisions don’t enforce themselves.  One by one, the various incentives for schools to discriminate have to be removed.  This is a good one to start with.  I have more.

(If you have a WSJ subscription, Jason Riley’s column covers the issue nicely.)

THE FREE PRESS:  “Adults With Disabilities Deserve to Work:  For Many People with Intellectual Disabilities, a Subminimum-Wage Job Offers Pride, Responsibility, and Some Extra Cash.  So Why Are Activists Fighting to Eliminate Their Programs?”

I wrote on this subject for the Commission on Civil Rights a few years ago (during the late, great lockdown). It struck me then as jaw-droppingly stupid that so-called disability rights groups would advocate abolishing the special minimum wage laws for severely disabled employees.  For them, it’s that or unemployment.  I wondered at the time whether unions like the SEIU were funding the effort, since dues-paying unskilled workers, probably immigrants with low English skills but no other problems, would likely replace the severely disabled workers.  I admit I have no particular evidence of this.  But the massive effort (and it is massive) behind the “Abolish the Subminimum” campaign is just plain weird.  The public comment we got from the parents and guardians of severely disabled employees was OVERWHELMINGLY against doing away with the program.  And yet the campaign marches on.

GOLDEN STATE FOLLIES:  Voters here in California would like their elected leaders to do something to prevent wildfires.  Behold Senate Bill 653 (introduced by Senator Dave Cortese):  While the bill’s title is “Wildfire prevention:  Environmentally sensitive vegetation management,” the entire text reads. “Section 1:  It is the intent of the Legislature to enact subsequent legislation to define ‘environmentally sensitive vegetation management’ and to encourage the use of environmentally sensitive vegetation management practices.”

That’s it.  Maybe they’ll get around to it later; right now they just wanted us to know that they’re thinking about us.  Cortese sent around an email bragging about having introduced this very important … bill about wildfire prevention statement of vague intent.  Not surprisingly, the email doesn’t quote the bill’s text, it only quotes the title.

Meanwhile, the California legislature is swimming in slavery reparations bills.  For example, one bill would establish a “Bureau for Descendants of American Slavery.”  Another would give the descendants of slaves “priority” for certain professional licenses.  A third would give admissions preferences at California universitiesto descendants of slaves.  There are more.

The folks in the Cal Legislature never learn.  They have their priorities.  But they don’t look much like the voters’ priorities.

ANOTHER PIG WAR IN THE MAKING?:  Beginning in 1859, the United States and Great Britain fought a war (of sorts) over the boundary between Canada and the United States.  At issue was which country owns the San Juan Islands situated between Vancouver Island (Canada) and the Washington State mainland.

In one of the more comical episodes in military history, “the Pig War”  (as it was called) was triggered by an actual pig who was trespassing onto a farm and helping himself to the tasty tubers he had found there.  The farmer, American Lyman Cutlar, shot and killed the wayward pig, which turned out to be owned by Charles Griffin, a Brit, who worked for the Hudson Bay Company.  “It was eating my potatoes,” Cutlar is rumored to have said.  “It was up to you to keep your potatoes out of my pig,” was Griffin’s (supposed) reply.

When British authorities, claiming jurisdiction over the islands, threatened to arrest Cutlar, a cold war broke out between the two sovereigns.  The 9^th Infantry came out to protect America’s territorial claim.  The British dispatched no fewer than five warships.  Though no shots were fired (other than the one that killed poor Porky), it took years to resolve the issue.  Eventually, Kaiser Wilhelm I was called in to decide things.  He declared the islands to be American, and the British, with their usual stiff upper lip, departed the premises.

Why am I bringing this up now? History repeats itself.  According to CBS News, marauding  Canadian “super pigs” are viewed as a threat to American ranchers today.  These very large and not very well-behaved wild hogs are evidently a cross between domestic hogs and wild ones, and they have become quite numerous.  The oinkers are already wreaking havoc on Canadian farms and ranches and will do so here as soon as they hit upon the border.  Another Pig War in the making …

Bottom line?  If President Trump is looking for an excuse to … uh … invade Canada, I think we’ve found it for him ….

DEFUND THE LEFT, DEFUND THE LEFT:  “It’s Corruption, All the Way Down.”

AMERICAN CIVIL RIGHTS PROJECT UPDATE:  Yes, we’re keeping busy.  We’ve filed a Title VII administrative complaint against the ABA with the EEOC a few days ago.  And we filed a complaint with the Ohio Attorney General against two public universities that operate race-specific scholarship programs.  But most of our efforts are aimed at what I believe will be litigation with a major impact.  With luck, I’ll be able to say more in a month or two about that.  Stay tuned.