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Author: Joshua Thompson Discrimination.  Period.  With respect to race, it means treating certain people differently because they have a certain favored or disfavored skin color. I am often dismayed by opponents of racial preferences (opponents of discrimination), or proponents of equality under the law, when they use the the term & ...

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 ...

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 ...

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. … ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 ...

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 … ...

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 ...