Turley: Minnesota Law School Drops Exclusion Of Whites And Males From Jones Day Diversity Scholarship

Jonathan Turley (George Washington; Google Scholar), Minnesota Law School Drops Exclusion of Whites and Males from Diversity Scholarship:

There is a curious resolution of a civil right complaint against University of Minnesota Law School over a diversity fellowship sponsored by the law firm of Jones Day. Despite being created by a law firm and administered by a law school, the fellowship violated federal law in excluding white and male applicants. The law school finally threw in the towel, but there remains an uncertainty over whether the school is engaging in a subterfuge by opening up the scholarship while retaining its original purpose.

The Jones Day Diversity Fellowship launched in December 2022 to extend full tuition for three years at the law school. The scholarship also allows the recipient to work as a summer associate at Jones Day, one of the most sought-after firms for summer employment. The firm website maintains that “We aggressively pursue hiring, retaining, and developing lawyers from historically underrepresented groups and backgrounds.”

Various conservative sites have slammed the diversity fellowship, which was the subject of a civil rights complaint by Adam Kissel.

The September 2023 complaint to the U.S. Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights (OCR) is now closed following a settlement to drop any “preference based on race or sex.”

The question is what difference the settlement will make in actual awards. ... 

The question going forward is whether there is a viable basis to challenge the program on an “as applied” theory. If white males continue to be excluded, the challengers could return to allege that nothing changed beyond the language.