Schools Warned About Ignoring Affirmative Action Ban

Former White House adviser Stephen Miller warned law schools that he will “take them to court” if they brush off the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling that ends race-based admissions policies.

In a video posted on Twitter, Miller, president of America First Legal, said his nonprofit sent a letter to hundreds of law school deans to alert them about legal action if they don’t uphold the court’s order.

“Today we sent a warning letter to the deans of 200 law schools around America, telling them that they must obey the Supreme Court’s ruling, striking down illegal racial discrimination and affirmative action,” Miller said.

“If they tried to violate, circumvent or bypass, subvert or otherwise program around that ruling, we are going to take them to court. We are going to hold them to account.”

The Supreme Court nixed admissions practices at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in a ruling that declared they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

America First Legal, in a press release, said the letters demand schools immediately end practices that violate the court ruling.

In a letter to John Manning, dean of Harvard Law School, Miller warned “of the consequences that you and your institution will face if you fail to comply with or attempt to circumvent the Court’s ruling.”

“There are those within and outside your institutions who will tell you that you can develop an admissions scheme through pretext or proxy to achieve the same discriminatory outcome,” the letter states. “Anyone telling you such a thing is coaching you to engage in illegal conduct in brazen violation of a Supreme Court ruling, lawbreaking in which you would be fully complicit and thus fully liable.”

Senior officials at Harvard promised to uphold the decision, The Hill reported, saying “we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the Court’s new precedent, our essential values.”

Gene Hamilton, America First’s legal vice president and general counsel, in a statement said the organization is “ready to defend the right of any American harmed by these unlawful practices.”

“For too long, rather than being beacons of hope and serving as models of equal treatment under the law, law schools have used discriminatory practices that should offend every American,” Hamilton said.

“These practices do not just infect and affect legal academia — they then inculcate generations of lawyers who fail to appreciate the meaning of true equality, fail to advance the rule of law, and who fail to speak truth to power with their clients.”