Civil Rights Act of 1964

• Cornerstone initiated the case on January 9, 2023, and Mr. Valdes filed his original counterclaims on May 25, 2023.
• In his Amended Counterclaims, filed today, Mr. Valdes included new individual claims of ethnicity discrimination and retaliation against Cornerstone’s Chairman Marc Laird and his son, Cornerstone President Adam Laird.
• In his Counterclaims, Mr. Valdes alleges that the Lairds and Cornerstone subjected him to harassment, discrimination, and retaliation because he is a Latino of Catholic faith and Mexican national origin.
• Mr. Valdes alleges that ultimately Cornerstone wrongfully terminated his employment and—on the same day—filed a pretextual and retaliatory lawsuit against him.

• In two cases before the U.S. Supreme Court’s 2023 summer recess, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote majority opinions that involved the use of race.
• In the court’s 5-4 Allen v. Milligan decision, Roberts wrote that states must consider race in some circumstances when drawing congressional districts.
• Though Roberts’ opinions appear at odds, his general disdain for the use of race is not.

Use of race to determine political districts

• At issue in the Alabama case was whether the power of Black voters was diluted by dividing them into districts where white voters dominate.
• Black residents make up about 27% of the state’s population, and voting rights advocates argued that they deserved not one but two political districts.
• Second, if the racial minority is politically cohesive, meaning that its members tend to vote together for the same candidates.
• All three conditions were true in Alabama, and the totality of the circumstances suggested minority voters did not participate equally in the political process in the area.
• “States shouldn’t let race be the primary factor in deciding how to draw boundaries, but it should be a consideration,” Roberts wrote.

The use of race in college admissions

• Roberts had a different view of race and its importance in diversifying college campuses.
• He argued that the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment – and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act – strictly limited how schools could use race in admissions.
• “College admissions are zero sum, and a benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former at the expense of the latter,” Roberts wrote.
• Though Roberts could have used previous U.S. Supreme Court decisions in 1978’s Regents of the University of California v. Bakke or its 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision to continue to allow the use of race in college admissions, he did not.

Roberts’ opinions reveal racial ambivalence

• In both circumstances, the use of race worked as a corrective to discriminatory voting laws and college admissions practices.
• In congressional redistricting, race is used to build districts to counter racial bloc voting and de facto residential and ideological segregation.
• In her dissent in the North Carolina affirmative action case, Associate Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson spells out the problem with Roberts’ ambivalence on race.

• Strive underscored that McDonald's diversity policies not only pose legal risks but financial risks as well.
• Consequently, McDonald’s policies are likely already costing shareholders and jeopardizing the company’s long-term value, even setting the legal risks aside.
• "Prior to the Fair Admissions decision, many workplace DEI (Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion) programs were legally dubious,” stated Justin Danhof , Strive Head of Corporate Governance.
• To comply with the law and safeguard shareholders from costly litigation, McDonald’s should swiftly eliminate these programs.”

• As a researcher who specializes in education and workplace policies, I have examined why people support legacy admissions and not affirmative action.
• I found that even though legacy admissions are based on parental connections to a given school, support for the policy actually has something to do with race.
• The complaint argues that legacy admissions are tantamount to racial discrimination because Harvard grants preferential treatment to legacies – 70% of whom are white.
• The complaint alleges that Harvard’s use of legacy admissions therefore violates Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits racial discrimination in institutions that receive federal funds.

Examining rationales

• I found that those who support legacy admissions do so in part because they want to maintain a racial hierarchy.
• In this hierarchy, white Americans are the dominant group, and ethnic minorities are subordinates.
• To examine people’s beliefs about racial hierarchy and how much they support it, I used a construct called social dominance orientation.

Taking a closer look

• I used social dominance orientation in two different studies to examine people’s attitudes toward legacy admissions versus affirmative action.
• In the first study, I recruited 80 UCLA students from an online database maintained by the university.
• Of that group, 38 were Asian, 36 were white, four were Latino and two were multiracial.
• I first measured social dominance orientation by asking participants to rate how positively or negatively they felt about the eight statements in the social dominance orientation scale.

Underlying motives

• Even though Asian American and white American students were supportive of legacy admissions in the first study, I couldn’t establish why.
• In other words, it was possible that both Asian American and white American students supported legacy admissions not because they wanted to uphold the hierarchy.
• To better determine the underlying motivation for support of legacy admissions, in the second study I examined only the views of Asian Americans.
• I then randomly assigned participants to read about legacy admissions that would benefit either Asian Americans or white Americans.

The quest for equality

• However, legacy admission policies can maintain the hierarchy because they disproportionately benefit white people – the historically advantaged group.
• Now that consideration of race in college admissions has been banned, universities have an opportunity to revamp how they decide which students to admit.