The U.S. Department of Justice, in an amicus brief filed to a federal appeals court on Tuesday, is arguing against a ruling from last October, which defended Harvard’s use of affirmative action in its admission process. In that ruling, a federal court said Harvard didn’t discriminate against Asian Americans in its admissions process, a contention made in a lawsuit filed in 2014 against it by an anti-affirmative action group called Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA).
The DOJ’s amicus brief supports an appeal made by SFFA, three days after the federal court’s ruling in favor of Harvard last fall. The DOJ filed its brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
In a statement, the DOJ says Harvard’s “use of race in its admissions process violates federal civil rights law and Supreme Court precedent.” In the statement, the DOJ said Harvard must comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits discrimination based on race, color or national origin in programs and activities that receive federal financial assistance.
“Race discrimination hurts people and is never benign,” said Assistant Attorney General Eric Dreiband for the Civil Rights Division, in the statement about the brief. “Unconstitutionally partitioning Americans into racial and ethnic blocs harms all involved by fostering stereotypes, bitterness and division among the American people. The Department of Justice will continue to fight against illegal race discrimination.”
The DOJ’s brief agrees with SFFA’s contention that Harvard evaluates Asian Americans differently from other groups.
“In other words, Harvard’s admissions officers tended to evaluate Asian Americans, as compared to members of other racial groups, as having less integrity, being less confident, constituting less-qualified leaders, and so on,” says the DOJ’s brief.
The DOJ’s brief also says “the remarkably stable racial composition of Harvard’s incoming classes reflects racial balancing,” and that Harvard “achieves racial balancing by considering race throughout the admissions process and continually monitoring and reshaping the class’s racial composition.” And while it says the Supreme Court has held that colleges receiving federal funds may consider applicants’ race in certain limited circumstances, Harvard has “failed to prove that its use of race is narrowly tailored.”
