Articles

How would you avoid disparate impact liability?

December 16, 2014 | By WENCONG FA

Disparate impact theory tells employers that they have broken the law when a concededly neutral hiring practice produces too many employees of one race and not enough of another. Let’s say you’re an employer looking to hire 20 people from a pool of 100 applicants. You give the same standardized test to all 100 applicants … ...

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Race-based academic goals are both offensive and ineffective

July 16, 2013 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

At PLF, we believe that individuals have a constitutional right to equal treatment by their government regardless of their race, and we’re actively defending that right. Last year we took note when the Florida and Virginia state boards of education approved strategic plans that set different academic targets for different races. In order to g ...

Articles

Another one bites the dust

April 22, 2013 | By ANASTASIA BODEN

The Tennessee bill to ban race or sex preferences in government hiring, which we previously reported on here, is dead.  Readers will recall that the bill was amended at last minute to prohibit race preferences granted solely on race or sex.  Perhaps the bill’s defeat was a blessing in disguise, as the amendment robbed the … ...

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Thoughtcrime and liability for alleged unconscious biases

February 01, 2013 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

In George Orwell’s dystopian novel 1984, police monitored residents of Oceania for evidence of “thoughtcrime.”  In Pippen v. Iowa, a case that takes the concept of unintentional discrimination to dangerous new levels, that concept doesn’t seem too far away.  In Pippen, several black employees and job applicants filed a law ...

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Sacramento Superior Court holds "public officers" can treat people differently because of race

December 26, 2012 | By JOSHUA THOMPSON

Today we learned that the Sacramento Superior Court sustained the government’s demurrer in Connerly v. State of California.  This case challenged Government Code Section 8252 as facially unconstitutional, because it requires members of the Citizens Redistricting Commission to appoint officers to serve on the Commission according to their r ...

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Minority children are not inherently deficient– so schools should stop treating them that way

December 17, 2012 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

The Florida Department of Education and Virginia State Board of Education recently approved strategic plans that establish different race-based academic achievement goals for K-12 students.  As we’ve explained before, assigning different scholastic targets based on students’ races is not only patronizing – it’s just plain wrong ...

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Setting academic achievement goals based on skin color is a “race” to the bottom of educational policy

October 17, 2012 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

Individuals should not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.  Most children learn that famous line from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “I Have a Dream” speech at an early age.  Unfortunately, children in Florida public schools are going to learn a very different lesson by 2018. … ...

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PLF continues the fight against the unconstitutional Redistricting Commission selection process

May 18, 2012 | By PACIFIC LEGAL FOUNDATION

PLF filed the next round of legal documents in Connerly v. California, et al. today. First, some background. In 2008, California voters created the California Citizens Redistricting Commission. The Commission is made of 14 private citizens who are tasked with drawing California’s Congressional, Assembly, Senate, and Board of Equalization Elec ...

Articles

What equality means

April 03, 2012 | By JOSHUA THOMPSON

At PLF we believe that equality means treating everybody equally–that the government should not treat people differently because of something as genetically insignificant as skin color. We envision a society where everyone is equal under the law. Under this vision, universities would not be able to grant preferences to college applicants j ...