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SFFA v. Harvard Ruling Trickles Down To Courtroom Oral Argument Procedure

Not a big loss, but the trend isn't good.

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lawyer litigator judge courtroom motion argumentSoon after SFFA v. Harvard, the decision was abstracted out by conservative groups to mean that anything with a scintilla of thinking about racial equity was a 14th Amendment violation. Diversity programs? Lawsuit. Law review? Lawsuit. The saga continues, and this time an Illinois policy was caught in the cross hairs. From the ABA Journal:

[America First Legal Foundation] has declared victory after two federal judges in Illinois rescinded polices promoting what the group calls “oral-argument affirmative action.”
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The rescinded policies were intended to encourage “newer, female and minority” attorneys to argue motions. They provided that after a motion is briefed, a party may alert the court that a newer, female or minority attorney will argue the motion if a request for argument is granted. The court would then grant the request if practicable, would strongly consider granting extra time for argument, and would permit more experienced lawyers to assist.

Is this a major loss for DEI? Not really. The new policy states that oral argument is welcome or encouraged by relatively new attorneys and attorneys who have been their way around a courtroom should have the experience to level out the playing field. But it does signal that suffixing “affirmative action” to anything you don’t like could be a winning strategy for getting rid of it.

Some health bill that aims to reduce the abnormally high infant mortality rates in Black women? Fighting against that isn’t being totally cool with them dying on the table, now it’s called infant mortality-affirmative action, and the 14th Amendment can’t allow that! Before you chuck that in the hyperbole bucket, this has already happened.

What will it take to stop and correct this strategy to dismantle the wins of the civil rights movement? It won’t be LinkedIn posts and opinion pieces. It will take action, and lawsuits are an important part of that strategy — even if the oral argument time allotted to you makes things difficult.

Federal Judges End ‘Oral-Argument Affirmative Action,’ Leading Stephen Miller Group To Declare Victory [ABA Journal]

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Chris Williams became a social media manager and assistant editor for Above the Law in June 2021. Prior to joining the staff, he moonlighted as a minor Memelord™ in the Facebook group Law School Memes for Edgy T14s.  He endured Missouri long enough to graduate from Washington University in St. Louis School of Law. He is a former boatbuilder who cannot swim, a published author on critical race theory, philosophy, and humor, and has a love for cycling that occasionally annoys his peers. You can reach him by email at cwilliams@abovethelaw.com and by tweet at @WritesForRent.

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