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A University of Texas at Austin professor has sued Texas A&M University, claiming a new faculty fellowship program designed to increase diversity at the university discriminates against white and Asian male candidates, The Texas Tribune reported.
Richard Lowery, a finance professor at UT Austin, who is white, filed the federal class action lawsuit. He is represented by America First Legal, a group created by Stephen Miller, a policy adviser for former president Trump, and Jonathan Mitchell, a former solicitor general for Texas and the legal architect of the state’s six-week abortion ban. The fellowship at Texas A&M is for African Americans, Hispanic and Latino Americans, Native Americans, Alaskan Natives, and Native Hawaiians.
“Texas A&M’s proclaimed goal of establishing a faculty whose racial composition attains ‘parity with that of the state of Texas’ seeks to achieve racial balancing, which is flatly illegal under Title VI and the binding precedent of the Supreme Court,” the lawsuit said.
In a statement, Laylan Copelin, a spokesman for Texas A&M, called the legal filing an “unusual job application when Mr. Lowery says in the lawsuit he is ‘able and ready’ to apply for a faculty appointment at Texas A&M. But our lawyers will review the lawsuit, confer with Texas A&M and take appropriate action as warranted.”
