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Citing the Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action, a conservative group filed a lawsuit against Northwestern University’s Pritzker School of Law on Tuesday, accusing it of illegally discriminating against white men in faculty hiring.
The suit claims that Northwestern’s efforts to increase the number of women and people of color on the law school faculty amount to illegal discrimination under the precedent set by the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and UNC Chapel Hill cases. Of the last 21 positions filled at Pritzker, the suit says, three went to white men.
“For decades, left-wing faculty and administrators have been thumbing their noses at federal anti-discrimination statutes … by hiring women and racial minorities with mediocre and undistinguished records over white men who have better credentials, better scholarship, and better teaching ability,” the suit claims.
In a statement to multiple news outlets Tuesday, Northwestern spokesperson Jon Yates said the university would fight the allegations in court and that officials stand by their practices and are “proud of our outstanding faculty.”
The suit was filed by a group called Faculty, Alumni and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences, which is led by prominent conservative lawyer Jonathan Mitchell, a former Texas solicitor general. An addendum to the lawsuit notes that none of the rejected job candidates named in the suit was involved in the filing.
The lawsuit comes a year after the affirmative action ruling was passed down and follows a flurry of lawsuits seeking to broaden the scope of the SFFA ruling to apply to selective high schools, hiring practices and scholarships.
