Lawsuit Challenging University of California's D.E.I. Statements Is Tossed

[Leroy N. Soetoro]

https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/us/lawsuit-dei-university-of-
california.html

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit that challenged the University of
California system’s requirement that applicants for faculty positions must
file diversity statements.

The court, which issued the ruling on Friday, did not rule on the merits,
but said that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue because he never
actually applied for the open faculty position that he singled out in his
suit.

Diversity statements — also known as diversity, equity and inclusion, or
D.E.I., statements — ask candidates seeking a faculty job or promotion to
describe how they would contribute to campus diversity.

In his lawsuit, John Haltigan, who has a Ph.D. in developmental
psychology, said he would have applied to a position at U.C. Santa Cruz,
but that the D.E.I. statement made his application futile, since he is
“committed to colorblindness and viewpoint diversity.” The lawsuit
contended that the requirement acts as a “functional loyalty oath,”
violating his rights under the First Amendment.

The Pacific Legal Foundation, a libertarian group that filed the lawsuit
for Dr. Haltigan, did not make him available for an interview. But in a
February post on Substack, he wrote that D.E.I. statements have become “a
political litmus test” that has eroded diversity of thought in academia.

“Public trust in our universities has been severely diminished as a
consequence,” he wrote in the post.

What Supporters and Critics of D.E.I. Statements Say
Colleges that require D.E.I. statements, including the 10-campus
University of California system, defend them as part business strategy,
part skills assessment, helping gauge a potential hire’s commitment to
teaching and supporting an increasingly diverse student body. They say
that with the statements, they seek to judge applicants on their intent
and actions, not beliefs.

“If someone says, ‘I don’t want to make any effort to teach a diverse
student body,’ that should be something we take into account because all
of us have to teach tremendously diverse students,” Erwin Chemerinsky, a
First Amendment scholar and dean of the Berkeley campus’s law school, said
in an interview before the decision.

But opponents say they help enforce an institutional ideology, sending the
message that those who are not on board with a certain view of diversity
are not welcome in the academy. They also say the statements are another
tool that the savvy can use to hit the right buzzwords, rewarding
performative dishonesty.

What’s Next
The court gave Mr. Haltigan three weeks to amend the complaint. “We will
consider all avenues to vindicate our client’s First Amendment rights,”
said Wilson Freeman, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation.

This ruling will hardly settle the debate over the University of
California system’s D.E.I. requirements for faculty hiring — or the
system’s diversity and inclusion efforts more broadly — but it defangs for
now what experts say was among the first legal challenges to these
university statements.

Some states, including North Dakota, Florida and Texas, have barred
requiring them or prohibited them altogether, according to a tracker by
The Chronicle of Higher Education. Universities in Arizona were recently
prohibited from requiring them as well.


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