REVERSE BIAS SUIT KO’D
Group alleged Harvard Law Review discriminates against white men
A federal judge has thrown out a lawsuit by an organization alleging the Harvard Law Review is discriminating against white men in favor of female and minority candidates.
Federal Judge Leo Sorokin on Wednesday dismissed the suit without prejudice. The judge said the plaintiffs, the Faculty, Alumni and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences, lacked standing to file the action.
FASORP, in its initial filing in October, accused the Harvard Law Review Association of violating Title VI and Title IX laws by using racial and gender preferences when electing student members of the Harvard Law Review, choosing articles for publication and hiring faculty.
According to the suit, the HLRA selects 48 students each year, 20 based on their scores in a writing competition and 10 based on a combination of their writing scores and grades. The suit challenged the selection of the remaining 18, who are chosen “through a holistic but anonymous review” that takes into account race, gender, disability status, sexual orientation and socioeconomic status.
The group alleged that the HLRA chooses “in favor of female or minority faculty candidates against white men.”
The HLRA argued that FASORP was too vague in identifying any students who had been discriminated against or who had suffered from the policies. Sorokin, in dismissing the suit, agreed.
“Their failure to supply even the slightest description of any member … including concrete and particularized, actual or imminent injury … requires dismissal of the Amended Complaint in its entirety,” Sorokin wrote.
FASORP has until Sept. 9 to file an amended complaint addressing the multiple deficiencies Sorokin cited in his dismissal.
The organization, whose simple, single-page website features a submission form for site visitors to “relate anecdotes of reverse discrimination,” has a similar suit pending in federal court against the New York University Law Review.
U.S. Education Secretary Betsy DeVos, a defendant in that suit, filed a motion to dismiss through a federal attorney in June.