Articles

Quillette : The Peculiar Silence in the Students for Fair Admissions Decision

August 21, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

To hear almost anyone tell it, racial preferences in university admissions are dead. But this pervasive sense of finality belies a curious silence in the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions. The Court never expressly overrules the line of precedent that has allowed universities to discriminate for the last 50 years. Witho ...

Articles

Law & Liberty : Is It Time to Stop Asking About Race?

July 13, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

We’ve all checked the boxes on race and ethnicity questionnaires, a staple of most government applications and surveys, and they have never made much sense. On ethnicity, they ask whether you are “Hispanic or Latino” or “Not-Hispanic or Latino,” which is about as sensible a question as asking a mammal if it’s a c ...

Articles

Fox News : Supreme Court puts universities on notice, but missed an opportunity

June 29, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

Universities take note — the Supreme Court will not tolerate the fanatical and wanton reliance on race that has become the norm in admissions. In Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court held that Harvard and North Carolina had gone too far with racial preferences in weighing student applicants. Too … ...

Articles

San Antonio Express-News : Texas should end judicial deference

June 06, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

In 2011, Hermenia Jenkins, the principal at a public school in a Houston suburb, was surprised to learn that despite her term contract, the superintendent had demoted her to assistant principal and was moving her to a different school. She took umbrage, arguing that her contract shielded her from this reassignment because the new job … ...

Articles

Texas poised to ban ‘ideological oaths’ at state universities

May 18, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

The Texas House of Representatives will soon vote on a bill that would strengthen academic freedom and intellectual diversity at Texas universities. Senate Bill 17 would prohibit public universities from requiring “ideological oaths or statements” of students, staff, or job applicants, and it would put an end to university offices dedic ...

Articles

Des Moines Register : Iowa Legislature should restore judicial independence

April 06, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

In 2020, the Iowa Supreme Court rejected a married couple’s challenge to the Department of Revenue over a tax assessment and penalty involving the sale of farmland. The question was whether the couple had “materially participated” in a “business” by renting their farmland. The couple said they did, pointing to their bo ...

Articles

The Hill : The federal government wants to micromanage the nation’s housing

April 03, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

In the early 2000s, the city of St. Paul, Minn., cracked down on landlords who ignored rat problems, bad sanitation, poor heating, and so on. But instead of shaping up, the landlords sued the city for violating the federal Fair Housing Act. They argued that St. Paul’s insistence upon habitable homes hurt minorities by forcing … ...

Articles

The Hill : A disabled Navy veteran seeks to end discrimination by federal agency

February 27, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

Marty Hierholzer is a service-disabled veteran with a simple request: that the government look to his individual qualifications, rather than his skin color. The Small Business Administration (SBA) runs a program called 8(a), which helps small business owners who face social disadvantage. The federal government sets aside a percentage of government ...

Articles

The Hill : Must an Antioch student bow down to ‘social justice’ dogma to graduate?

February 06, 2023 | By ETHAN BLEVINS

A graduate student at Antioch University in Seattle has incurred the wrath of her college by criticizing their radical approach to training therapists. Leslie Elliott, who says she considers herself a liberal, is a master’s student in clinical therapy. She grew fed up with a department that she believes has abandoned genuine therapy for extre ...