Daily Archives: April 13, 2022

H&M plans to elevate MPJI and its community throughout the year with a series of programs and events aimed to celebrate artistic expression and provide mental health awareness and resources. The retailer and nonprofit will leverage key celebrities and influencers to amplify the work of MPJI and more importantly, provide much-needed resources to the Black transgender community.

"At MPJI, we encourage everyone to be themselves and respect others for who they are, not just today but every day, " said Elle Moxley of MPJI. "We are thrilled to continue our partnership with H&M and celebrate the Black transgender community through programs that provide real impact."

Programs planned for the year include events centered on mental health awareness and resources, PRIDE, and a fireside chat for H&M employees with Moxley and one of the co-chairs of PrisHM, the company's LGBTQ+ colleague resource group.

"H&M is a company that values our employees bringing their true selves to our organization, and the communities we serve, every day. We are proud to partner with the Marsha P. Johnson Institute for a second year so that we can assist in further amplifying their mission of elevating the Black transgender community," said Carlos Duarte, President, H&M Americas.

The partnership will also include an extended return of the inaugural event from last year, where hundreds of teens and young adults across the country participated in a 'Fresh and Fabulous for the Fall' back-to-school makeover event and received H&M Gift Cards and VIP cards.

About MPJIThe Marsha P. Johnson Institute (MPJI) protects and defends the human rights of BLACK transgender people. We do this by organizing, advocating, creating an intentional community to heal, developing transformative leadership, and promoting our collective power.

For more information on H&M please contact:H&M Media RelationsEmail: [emailprotected]

H & M Hennes & Mauritz AB (publ) was founded in Sweden in 1947 and is quoted on Nasdaq Stockholm. H&M's business idea is to offer fashion and quality at the best price in a sustainable way. In addition to H&M, the group includes the brands COS, Monki, Weekday, & Other Stories, H&M HOME and ARKET as well as Afound. The H&M group has 54 online markets and approximately 4,800 stores in 75 markets including franchise markets. In 2021, net sales were SEK 199 billion. The number of employees amounts to approximately 155,000. For further information, visit hmgroup.com.

Media Contact: Heather HansenHumanity Communications Collective[emailprotected]

SOURCE H&M

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MARSHA P. JOHNSON INSTITUTE AND H&M KICK OFF THEIR SECOND-YEAR PARTNERSHIP - PR Newswire

Washington,D.C. -U.S. Senator Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Representative Terri Sewell (D-AL-7th) introduced the John Lewis Equality in Medicare and Medicaid Treatment (EMMT) Act that would require the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation (CMMI) to work with experts to consider health disparities when developing payment models.

Established by the Affordable Care Act, CMMI works to develop, test, and implement new value-based payment models. Under current law, however, CMMI is not required to consider social determinants of health - such as a patients environment, education, and economic status-when implementing and testing new payment models. The current status quo incentivizes health providers to pick patients who will produce favorable clinical outcomes, which leaves women, people in rural communities, and Black and Brown people sidelined in the development of payment models.

The John Lewis EMMT Act would direct CMMI to consult with experts on health disparities, such as the Office of Minority Health of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services, the Federal Office of Rural Health Policy, and the Office on WomensHealth, ondeveloping new payment models that focus not only on lowering costs but also advancing health equity and improving access to care.

The current health care system contains numerous disparities in health equity and access to care, a fact that has been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic,said Sen. Booker. My dear colleague John Lewis understood this and fought to make our health care system fairer. I am proud to continue this fight with this bicameral legislation that would make critical reforms to our health care system, helping our nation address health disparities and improve health outcomes, especially for underserved communities.

Our late colleague, Congressman John Lewis, knew that in order to achieve true justice, we must be intentional about increasing access to health care for communities of color,said Rep. Sewell. As co-chair of the Ways and Means Committees Racial Equity Initiative, Im committed to advancing his legacy by bringing health equity to the forefront of our policy agenda. By ensuring that the Center for Medicare & Medicaid Innovation considers the impact of new payment models on communities of color, the John Lewis Equalityin Medicare and Medicaid Treatment Act will help us reduce racial disparities and build a fairer and more just health care system. Im proud to join Senator Booker in introducing this bill and urge my colleagues to give it their full support.

Movement is Life commends Senator Booker for his outstanding leadership on health equity,said Mary OConnor, MD and Chair of Movement is Life.Ensuring that the CMS Innovation Center develops and tests health payment models which do not exacerbate health disparities is essential to achieving health equity. On behalf of the millions of Americans who are hurt by the discrimination currently embedded in our healthcare system by these biased payment models, thank you.

Specifically, the John Lewis Equality in Medicare and Medicaid Treatment Act directs CMMI to:

Consider a models impact on access to care for people of color, women, and people in rural areas, in addition to cost and quality.

Include experts in health disparities and social determinants of health during the evaluation and review process for new payment models.

Directs CMMI to create a Social Determinants of Health Model that focuses on health conditions of those dually eligible for Medicaid and Medicare, behavioral health, and maternal mortality.

The John Lewis Equality in Medicare and Medicaid Treatment Act is supported by the National Association of Orthopaedic Nurses,The Root Cause Coalition, the National Black Nurses Association,the Osteoarthritis Action Alliance,and the Academy of Medical-Surgical Nurses.The legislation is cosponsored in the Senate by Senators Alex Padilla (D-CA) and Sherrod Brown (D-OH).

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Booker, Sewell Introduce Legislation to Advance Health Equity and Access to Care - Senator Cory Booker

(Image credit: Kanoe Namahoe)

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Education cannot return to what it was in March 2020; that system did not work for everyone, Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said to educators at this years ASCD Annual Conference in Chicago.

We are at the doorstep of a new chapter of American education, Cardona said. Will we use this moment as a reset to boldly and unapologetically tackle the issues that have been pervasive in education? Or will we beat COVID only to succumb to complacency? We have more influence now than ever before in education. Lets remember why we signed up for this profession.

Cardona outlined his vision for moving American education forward and the role whole child education plays in it during his closing keynote discussion with ASCD board member Avis Williams and a post-keynote interview with me. Here are six takeaways from those conversations.

The most important thing school leaders can do in the next 22 months is create a culture of shared expectations a culture of problem-solving, where they may face unique challenges and not have all the answers, Cardona said.

These are different times, he explained. Creating a culture of intentional collaboration and looking at the whole child and the whole educator is probably more important now than ever before.

Cardona credited intentional collaboration teamwork among educators, school leaders and administrators for getting schools to 100% in-person, full-time instruction. This type of collaboration will be key to bringing true reset to our schools, he said.

Like the African proverb teaches us: If you want to go fast, go alone. If you want to go far, go together, he said. Even this citys own Michael Jordan once said, Talent wins games, but teamwork and intelligence wins championships. For our students each day in the classroom is a championship.

Improving outcomes for the whole child begins with improving support of the whole educator, according to Cardona.

We need to think differently about how we support our educators or else we shouldnt be surprised that they walk away, he said. He outlined three strategies he gleaned from conversations and visits hes held with educators over the last year.

Offer a competitive salary. Many educators hold a masters degree or higher; yet their salaries are not commensurate with their degrees. Added to this is the money they spend buying supplies for their classrooms and the time they take away from their families to plan lessons, grade school work or participate in school functions.

We need to change that culture in education, he said. Lift the profession by paying what educators should be getting paid. And this doesnt mean just [the American Rescue Plan]. We need to create the understanding at the state level [of the] importance of state funding for education and local funding.

Improve working conditions. Teachers need emotional support resources. Many suffered stress, anxiety and personal loss amid the pandemic. Counselors and other mental health resources offer valuable support as teachers continue navigating their new norm. When teachers know theyre cared for, theyre more likely to give their best, Cardona asserted.

When that emotional bandwidth is full because youre dealing with problems, its hard for you to be 100% of your job, he said. We have to make sure that we have folks whose job it is to be dedicated to the well-being of our professional staff, our classified staff, because when theyre OK, theyre going to take care of our kids better.

Engage teachers meaningfully. The work day should be conducive to professional growth. Cardona encouraged leaders to nurture intentional collaboration at their sites by embedding into the workday time for staff to come together, share ideas, discuss issues and problem-solve. Teachers shouldnt have to be learning about how to do a better job outside school hours, outside of their workday, he said.

COVID-19 turned students lives upside down. It was especially difficult for English-language learners, students with special needs and those with messy home lives absent parents, food insecurity, homelessness and domestic violence, among other issues. Helping students recuperate academically and emotionally from the pandemic will call for a new relationship between home and school, Cardona said.

The systems responsibility now is to go beyond the traditional relationship with families, he said. How do we help families so they can support their children?

Cardona urged school leaders to use their ARP funds to provide support services for families counseling, behavioral health assistance, after-school programming and help them reconnect with the school community. He cited the example of school districts in Boston and Las Vegas that used ARP dollars to develop parent engagement programs. At some sites, parents hold leadership roles at the school or in classrooms. Other sites hired family-school liaisons. These individuals visit students homes and foster relationships with families, in particular those who may have suffered increased trauma from the pandemic.

Programs like these go a long way toward reengaging the home-school connection. We must build these partnerships if we want to move forward educating children, said Cardona.

Parents must be at the table. Theyre the most influential and most important teachers of our students, he said. Whether theyre prepared or not, we have to work to build a family.

Educators need to share the wins theyre seeing in their classrooms. We talk a lot about what happened during the time schools were closed, said Cardona. But why do we brush over the improvement that happened in September when students were back in school because of the work of educators?

Its time to go on the offensive and control the narrative, asserted Cardona. Dont wait to defend what youre doing, he advised. Talk about the great work youre doing. Put faces to the benefits of the American Rescue Plan. You are experts in education.

Cardona highlighted a school district in Canton, Mich., that restructured the school schedules for all 6,000 of its high-school students. The new schedule gives every high-schooler one period per day for mental health support or social-emotional well-being activities. They made it happen, he said, referencing Cantons high-school leaders. They were bold, and they said, Were going to do this because its good for kids.

Talk about your successes, and be your districts biggest cheerleader for improvement and innovation, Cardona told the ASCD audience.

I believe the appetite for education funding in the next decade in this country will be guided by the perception of how ARP funds are used in the next 24 months, he said. I want you to share your best practices. I want you to lift up stories of success. If were not controlling our narrative, somebody else will.

Now is the time for schools to be bold about what they want to fix, Cardona said. He cautioned educators not to fall into a trap of complacency.

I would say over the last two years, I was afraid of COVID. For the next few years, Im afraid of complacency, he said.

Cardona exhorted leaders to maintain a high level of urgency around addressing disparity and invest their ARP money into programs aimed at breaking these cycles. He gave the example of Cascade School District in Washington. The district used its ARP dollars for evidence-based reading and math interventions, summer school and after-school tutoring.

Now its time to level up education to really build it to where its going to have impact for generations to come, he said. Embrace this opportunity to hit the reset on the things that we know didnt work. And let your fingerprints be on the plan for education in our country, and well move forward.

Education in America is on the cusp of change. Forging a new pathway wont be easy, but going backward is not an option, Cardona asserted.

We cant go back to March 2020. That system didnt work for everyone, he said. The decisions we make in the next 24 months will either help close the achievement disparities or widen them, especially for those students that were in the most impacted communities.

Cardona repeated his charge for educators to use their ARP resources for wraparound programs tutoring, mentoring and enrichment curricula that can help close these gaps.

Lets give every student in every phase of their academic lives the support they need to succeed, he said. If we make investments in our students and educators now, were champions not only for our school communities of today, but the school communities of tomorrow.

Success is within reach, but getting there will require a collective effort, Cardona said.

We need all hands on deck here. To level up our education system, we must involve teachers, school leaders, families, students and entire communities, said Cardona. Its not going to be easy. Its not meant to be easy. But I want you to work together. Were blessed to be in this position. This is the best time to be in education. Lets make a difference.

Kanoe Namahoe is the director of content for SmartBrief Education and Business Services. Reach her at kanoe.namahoe@futurenet.com.

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Cardona: We are at the doorstep of a new chapter in American education - Smartbrief

Chaka Coleman

By Chaka Coleman

What is leadership? This is a question I endeavored to answer when I took former Dean Andy Klein and professor Susan Brooks Leadership in the Law class at IU McKinney this past fall.

Too many times as students of color we have been asked, Do you know Jimmie McMillian? While I believe Jimmie to be a remarkable human being, he is just that human. He cannot mentor the entire city of Indianapolis, be a husband, father, top tier attorney and not sacrifice time. He needs your help, and as future lawyers, so do we. There are many potential Jimmie McMillians in the legal profession, many of whom youve never heard of, waiting for the chance to be elevated and challenged to provide solutions.

As I think back on my time in that classroom, I can name a place where each of the 20 or so students would thrive as leaders. The wonderful thing about IU McKinneys law program is that it accepts students from diverse backgrounds parents, police officers, engineers, educators and utilizes their real-world experiences to benefit the legal field. If attorneys dont provide these students with real leadership opportunities, not based on years of practice but based on the experience they already bring to the table, they are doing a disservice to ingenuity and relegating perseverance to an afterthought of the human psyche.

I had a candid conversation about leadership with IndyBar President Judge Alicia Gooden this past summer. I asked, How can you tell someone who navigated law school with a family and full-time job and who now practices complex bond financing deals or litigates major felony cases that they are not qualified to hold a leadership position?

Crisis management, financing and feeding humans certainly qualifies you for any position in any association, board or committee. And that, dear colleagues, should be the attitude that each of us takes with us when we look for a potential addition to our leadership teams.

The lack of leadership opportunities is even more prevalent in communities of color, which is disheartening. Quite frankly, there arent enough of us to not provide fresh perspectives the opportunity to shine. I liken this to both a fear of the unknown and a lack of faith; but faith is what we need to push our profession into the next generation of change. A great example of tapped potential is Angka Hinshaw. She is a soft-spoken superhero who has done a phenomenal job advocating for cultural awareness and equity within the legal profession alongside Justice Steven David.

Undoubtedly, expertise is important, and many attorneys are successful and accomplished and should be celebrated as such. I am advocating for the collective to continue to encourage and promote the unknown who may also desire the opportunity to make an impact but may not quite know how. Although not always the case, Im sure that veteran attorneys would like to go home to their families, proud of the fact that they are building a legacy of future policymakers, judges and litigators, one relinquished duty at a time.

So, I ask again: What is leadership? Well, sometimes it is simply asking what you can do to support someone elses growth. As practitioners of the law, we are taught to mitigate risk and keep our clients needs safe behind the shield of justice. But what we are not taught is that leadership and leadership opportunities are inherently risky, with rewards that can arguably outweigh any peril involved.

In conclusion, before you ask students and fledgling attorneys if they know Jimmie McMillian, I challenge you to first ask yourself if you know anyone other than Jimmie McMillian who can serve as a resource and support system to help a new attorney on their legal journey. Then ask yourself if there is a leadership opportunity not that he can provide, but that you, your network or organization are willing to provide. It takes confidence and fortitude to witness someone else succeed, but there is no greater gift that you can give than intentionality, and when it comes to opportunities, intentional investment in the next generation of leaders is what our legal community needs.

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IndyBar: Intentional Investment: Providing Opportunities to the Next Generation of Lawyers - Indiana Lawyer

Scott will invest over $10 million in ARPA dollars to establish CVI ecosystem and address violence across the city.

BALTIMORE, MD (Wednesday, April 13, 2022) Today, Mayor Brandon M. Scott stood as a national leader in the Community Violence Intervention (CVI) space to lay out his strategy toexpand Baltimores CVI ecosystem. Mayor Scott was joined by the Mayors Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement (MONSE), White House Community Violence Intervention Collaborative (CVIC) technical advisors, the National Coalition for Criminal Justice Reform, The Health Alliance for Violence Intervention (HAVI), Safe Streets Baltimore, community-based organization partners, Baltimore-area hospital system partners, and community partners.

Baltimores Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plan (CVPP) outlines the Mayors commitment to invest in evidence-based violence intervention programming rooted in community and a public health approach. Scott has already committed to accelerating the implementation of the CVPP through a $50 million American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) investment into comprehensive public safety efforts announced last fall.

We know that in order to reduce violence, Baltimores capacity to transform conflict positively and reduce violence must drastically expand, said Mayor Brandon M. Scott. Community Violence Intervention is a nationally-acclaimed and implemented strategy that is proven to save lives and produce sustainable outcomes for communities experiencing devastating levels of violence. Establishing this ecosystem is a critical part of my Comprehensive Violence Prevention Plans approach to breaking the vicious cycle of violence by addressing it as a law enforcement issue and a public health epidemic.

Between FY22 - FY25, Baltimore will invest $10,025,000 from ARPA to issue a minimum of 30 contracts with partner organizations at the institutional and grassroots levels in outreach and conflict mediation, violence intervention, hospital-based violence intervention, school-based violence intervention, intensive case management and life coaching, and victim services.

Making our communities safer will take meaningful investment anda coordinated approach to response and intervention efforts. Thats why Im glad to see Mayor Scott leveraging federal American Rescue Plan funds in his comprehensive vision to improve public safety in Baltimore," said U.S. Senator Chris Van Hollen. The Community Violence Intervention Ecosystem plan both increases support for victims while offering pathways to homegrown economic opportunity that gives people hope for their futures. This initiative is an important part of an overall strategy to strengthen public safety and make Baltimore an even better place to live and work, and Ill keep fighting for more federal resources to support these efforts.

Today, Scott detailed his approach to developing, coordinating, and fostering a Community Violence Intervention ecosystem in Baltimore that includes violence intervention programming and victim services, intensive life coaching, hospital-based response, and other wraparound supports.

Scotts vision for an expanded CVI ecosystem includes:

In addition, Scott released Establishing the Ecosystem: A Vision for Community Violence Intervention in Baltimore, an in-depth report outlining the ways his administration will invest in trauma-informed, community-centered, and evidence-based public health interventions to stem the tide of violence through the establishment of a comprehensive and multi-faceted Community Violence Intervention (CVI) ecosystem.

Before the Scott Administration, Baltimores CVI landscape included ten Safe Streets sites, some partnerships with hospitals for hospital-based violence intervention programs, and one contract with Roca, which provides life coaching and other support to older teens and young adults.

Baltimores CVI ecosystem will include familiar programs, like Safe Streets and Roca, and grow to include additional partnerships with hospitals, public schools, victim services providers, life coaches, and case managers - each working together, covering more ground across the city, and playing a uniquely important role in the overall strategy to prevent and reduce violence. This approach is supported by the White House as a best practice to reduce violent crime in partnership with local communities.

Baltimore City is home to ten Safe Streets sites, each with its own staff and physical location based in the community, across eight administrators. Each Safe Streets site is intentionally located in a BPD post in the top percentile of gun violence across the city.

Currently, these ten sites cover only approximately 2.6 square miles of a 90 square mile city. MONSE will use ARPA funding to contract with community based organizations and service providers to build capacity and amplify the effectiveness of community violence intervention strategy components including, but not limited to, the provision of direct services and wraparound supports. Organizations can learn more about funding opportunities and submit a letter of interest at the Mayor's Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement's Funding Portal.

For over two decades, Safe Streets violence interrupters have been trusted messengers in the community and have stood on the frontlines, putting themselves in between a person pointing a gun and the person the gun is being pointed at to to interrupt the transmission of violence, said Shantay Jackson, Director of the Mayors Office of Neighborhood Safety and Engagement. The Scott administration is committed to cultivating a CVI network that is intentional about establishing support for those experiencing violence, and for those working on the ground to prevent it from occurring.

MONSE conducted an in-depth review of Baltimores ten current Safe Streets at Mayor Scotts direction. This evaluation focused on operational and cultural norms across the sites and was completed in the second half of 2021. As outlined in the 33-page report, MONSE will prioritize workforce safety, oversight and accountability of the program, training and development, workforce morale, career pathways for violence interrupters, and overall program efficacy.

An updated academic evaluation of Safe Streets is currently underway. One part of the study will analyze and evaluate Safe Streets Baltimores impact on gun violence. Another aspect of the study will include an investigation of Safe Streets sites in the Western District to generate a deeper qualitative understanding of how the sites engage with program participants, staff, local community-based and government organizations, and community members. The findings of these evaluations will be public and are expected to be shared in the first half of 2023.

Members of the public can read the report in full here.

Original post:

Mayor Scott Announces Vision for Community Violence Intervention Ecosystem in Baltimore - Mayor Brandon M. Scott

It is useless, for now, to predict where the six-justice conservative majority on the Supreme Court may be heading. But one possibility is worth noting: If the majority holds firm on just a handful of constitutional questions, it can decisively defeat what I call the coercive equity regime. The Court has an opportunity not only to halt the rise of wokeness but to dismantle its legal foundation. Americas traditional constitutional order can then be restored to vitality.

The Court can perform this rescue operation without any rethinking of constitutional theory and even without a reliable majority on most questions of constitutional law. I leave aside the stimulating debates over whether to abandon or modify originalism. My aim in this essay is narrow. I wish only to show that a conventional right-wing jurisprudencewhether described as originalist or noton a select number of questions is a mortal threat to the regime. The only question is whether the conservative majority will act decisively before it is too late.

To describe Americans as living under a regimelike Eastern Europeans living under communism during the Cold Waris to court dismay and disbelief. After all, the constitutional order that Americans founded in the eighteenth century remains recognizable. The forms of governmentthe periodic elections, the divided branches, the flag and sealpersist. The institutions of civil societychurches, schools, businesses, and associationsremain nominally independent of the state. No one eventan invasion, a coup, or victory in a civil warmarks the ascendancy of a new system of rule (although the late toppling of the old orders monuments makes one wonder). For these reasons, a powerful faction of American conservatives dismisses critics of the regime as dangerous catastrophists.

At the same time, Americans endure affronts to their heritage that not long ago would scarcely have been imaginable. Mobs desecrate statues of Christopher Columbus, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson, and Abraham Lincoln. Hospital systems propose to withhold life-saving medicines based on race. The vice president celebrates political violence (and her administrations Department of Justice seeks leniency for homicidal arsonists). Scholars submit professions of loyalty as a condition of hiring or advancement. Public school teachers urge children to sterilize themselves and mutilate their sex organs. Virtually every institution in American life boasts a permanent diversity, equity, and inclusion bureaucracy. The United States government flies the rainbow and Black Lives Matter flags and funds the advance of woke ideology abroad.

These developments follow from the embrace of a new moral principle unknown to generations before the 1960s. In its most benign form, the principle is as follows: Any disparity in outcome between groups, whether defined by race, ethnicity, religion, or sex (or more recently, sexual practices and gender identification), is evidence of injustice. But that formulation turns out to be inadequate. The overrepresentation of black people in the National Basketball Association or of Indian Brahmins in medicine attracts neither comment nor criticism. Instead, the evil that the principle demands to be corrected is any over-representation of the characteristics of any historically European populationheterosexual, white, and Christian. The demand for reduction in the power, status, and representation of such Americans we may call the principle of equity.

The principle of equity has not just advanced as an idea but become institutionalized. Public schools teach critical race theory. Universities boast multiple grievance studies departments and pledge tens of millions to increase faculty diversity, while their administratorsmany of them answerable to student demands for adherence to the principle of equityoutnumber faculty. On his first day in office, President Biden ordered equity audits of every federal agency. The principle of equity, in short, is not just a moral aspiration. It is the fountainhead of a sprawling network of power. That network we may call the equity regime.

Mercifully, the equity regime is relatively mild. It will not soon be constructing a gulag to house dissidents. Nevertheless, like communism, which sought equality of material wealth, equity, which seeks equality of outcomes for those in protected classes, can be achieved only through coercion. Indeed, socialism is far less utopian than the doctrine of equity. Zealous intentional communities, from the Benedictines to the Shakers, can achieve common ownership of property. But no society has ever eliminated disparities among racial and ethnic groups or between the sexes. As Thomas Sowell has documented, set patterns of achievement and social capital persist among different populations in an extraordinary variety of political and social circumstances. Whatever the causes, which are probably deep and intractable, disparities among different groups have outlasted all the policiesfrom affirmative action and social handicaps to expulsion, dispossession, and massacreever adopted to erase them.

Only the equity regimes hypocrisy prevents the principle of equity from taking more extreme forms. By the principle of equity, for example, colleges and professional schools should suspend the admission of whites for at least a generation, businesses should declare a moratorium on white male advancement, judges should favor the party who has more intersectional credit, and a special racial tax should be imposed to fund reparations. So far, the regime has yet to go to those extremes, but it is hard to identify a principled reason why not. (Ibram X. Kendi proposes a constitutional amendment that would indeed impose antiracist totalitarianism.) The doctrine of equity is perhaps silently held in check only by the many powerful white peoplesuch as the Bush, Biden, Clinton, and Sulzberger clanswho, even as they profess support for the equity regime, would lose their own power and privileges if the regime consistently sought to achieve its goals.

Inevitably, however, the failure of the regime to realize the principle of equity gets noticed. It takes but one event to catalyze the next lurch toward the obliteration of the old American order. In 2020, after George Floyd died while in police custody, a nationwide orgy of arson, murder, and looting ensued. The ruling class did not condemn the violence or aid its victims. On the contrary, corporations and universities pledged billions more dollars for the cause of equity. A year later, their candidate for president announced that he would appoint a black woman to the Supreme Courta wonderfully explicit commitment to discrimination on the basis of race and sex.

One cannot predict what, exactly, the coercive equity regime will target next. A decade ago, few imagined that biological males would find glory in humiliating girls in sports. After all, just a generation earlier, the principle of equity had forced the cancellation of male athletic programs (such as wrestling) on the theory that girls and boys are equally interested in sports and therefore should be able to join the same number of sports teams. Now its the turn of womens sports to be the victim of the principle of equity. Likewise, ten years ago, it seemed unlikely that uttering a moral sentiment as old as the Axial Ageall lives matterwould be met with demands for struggle sessions and groveling apologies. The next manifestation of the principle of equity is arbitrary, as parents of transgender children are discovering. But that the next one is coming is certain.

Vast and inexorable as the coercive equity regime may appear, it is vulnerable. As can occasionally be seen, a willingness to exert political power can halt its progress. Thus parents can confront school boards that support shaming students for their whiteness, and voters can demand that prosecutors and politicians incarcerate criminals (regardless of race) and keep streets and neighborhoods safe. Americans can and should resist this or that extension of the principle of equity where they can.

Meanwhile, one institutionthe Supreme Courthas the power to defeat the regime altogether. To do so, the Court need only follow through on a small number of constitutional reappraisals of civil rights doctrine that it developed in the decade and a half after the passage of the Civil Rights Act in 1964, reappraisals that already enjoy wide acceptance in the conservative legal establishment. In other words, no radical overhaul is needed. The Court, aided by the work of activists who can bring the necessary cases and controversies, need only do what conservatives for decades have hoped their pipeline of favored nominees would accomplish.

Hostile work environment. Under the theory of hostile work environment discrimination, an employer can be held liable merely for tolerating what anyone in a protected class might deem offensive. To be sure, a plaintiff can prevail only if the offensive conduct is severe and pervasive. But those standards are vague. A prudent corporate executive seeks to avoid liability, and this means adopting a zero-tolerance policy that prohibits any speech or conduct that could offend. Further, to bolster their bona fides should they be sued, employers make sure to adopt the latest ideological fashions. These business imperatives in turn require human resource departments that formulate and enforce diversity, equity, and inclusion guidelines. The result is that it is all but illegal to permit discussion of, say, the latest book by Charles Murray, and all but mandatory to endorse, say, the Black Lives Matter movement.

In short, hostile work environment law both promotes woke ideology and proscribes dissent. The Supreme Court can eliminate this systematic bias by holding that hostile work environment doctrine violates the constitutional right to free speech. Such a holding would not be especially radical. In the public school and university settings, two circuit court cases have held that anti-harassment guidelines conflict with free speech rights. Even the oncenotoriously progressive Ninth Circuit (though speaking through retired Reagan appointee Alex Kozinski) noted that an employers speech is entitled to significant breathing space before it will be deemed harassment. A conventionally conservative Supreme Court would be expected to hold that hostile work environment law violates the free speech clause. To be effective, the Supreme Courts holding must limit the power of Congress, state and local governments, and administrative agencies to revive hostile environment claims. A case must be brought where hostile work environment guidance can be held facially invalid.

Disparate impact. The fons et origo of the equity regime is the theory of disparate impact liability in employment discrimination cases. First conjured by the Supreme Court in the 1971 case of Griggs v. Duke Power Company, disparate impact law allows a plaintiff in an employment discrimination case to prevail without evidence of discriminatory intent, simply by showing that a job requirement or hiring procedure has a disparate impact on the plaintiffs protected class. Put in todays parlance, disparate impact law assumes systemic racism.

In theory, a disparate impact claim does not automatically prevail, for the law allows businesses to defend a practice by proving business necessity. But that is a costly and uncertain prospect. For businesses, the practical import of disparate impact is clear: Any failure to achieve proportionate outcomes among groups is an invitation to a lawsuit. To avoid disparate impact claims, employers must monitor the race, ethnicity, sex, and sexual orientation of their employees to keep numbers up for those in protected classes. To be sure, overt discrimination remains technically unlawful, which partly explains why employers shroud their practices in the latest rhetoric of inclusion recommended by a permanent staff of diversity professionals. Nevertheless, achieving diversity means discriminating on the basis of race and ethnicitythe very practice Americans thought they had outlawed with the 1964 Civil Rights Act.

Justice Thomas has argued that Griggs should be overturned. Indeed, but the Court must go further. As Justice Scalia wrote in a 2009 concurrence, the day is coming when the Supreme Court must decide whether the government, through disparate impact law, can effectively compel employers to discriminate on the basis of race or other ascriptive characteristics. The Supreme Court should not shrink from providing an answer. As soon as the occasion arises, it should hold that disparate-impact liability violates the Fifth Amendments guarantee of equal protection. To defeat the equity regime, disparate impact must not only be purged from civil rights law. It must be constitutionally cremated and buried, never again to be resurrected by Congress or government agencies.

Race-conscious admissions. The Courts tortured affirmative action jurisprudence has simultaneously legitimized the doctrine of equity and revealed its absurdity. Almost twenty years ago, Justice OConnors majority opinion in Grutter v. Bollinger upheld race-conscious admissions on the theory that racial diversity in the student body serves a compelling state interest. (Before its elevation into a sacred value, diversity was one justices makeshift attempt in 1978 to rationalize racial discrimination in university admissions.) But OConnor added that race-conscious admissions must be limited in time, and announced that the majority expected racial preferences to be unnecessary after twenty-five more years.

We are now nineteen years in, and racial gaps in test scores and GPA still show no sign of narrowing. Grutter itself was decided forty-two years after affirmative action had begun. Whether cynically or sincerely, OConnors opinion postponed a reckoning on racial discrimination for one more generation. The ongoing failure to achieve proportionate outcomes among all groupsnot just in universities, but in any domain of lifepointedly demonstrates the folly of trying or expecting it ever to happen. Why arent more firefighters women? Why arent more men nurses? Why are there so few black tax lawyers? And what about ensuring roles for transgender persons in movies?

In the pending cases in which Students for Fair Admissions is suing both Harvard and the University of North Carolina, asking the court to overturn Grutter, the Supreme Court must do more than reject diversity as a legitimate pretext for discriminating on the basis of race or other characteristics. Surely the Court knows that striking down affirmative action as unconstitutional will provoke resistance on a scale to dwarf the massive resistance attempted in the wake of Brown v. Board of Education (1954). Segregationists in the 1950s represented but one divided region of the country, a region held in disdain by the richest and most powerful people of that era. By contrast, the practitioners of affirmative action control every powerful institution in America. To counter the inevitable backlash, the Supreme Court must give Americans the weapons they need to stop quota-driven discimination altogether.

The crucial move is to elaborate a burden-shifting framework that will make it impossible for universities to camouflage the practice of discrimination. First, the Court should hold that, in light of decades of covert discrimination, any concealment or obsfucation of admissions criteria will be treated as conclusive evidence of a constitutional violation of equal protection (or in the case of a private university receiving federal financial assistance, a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act). For a university to defend against a claim of an equal protection violation, the Court should hold that it must disclose how many slots are available for which categories of admission, such as legacies, athletes, residents of particular areas, and children of major donors, as well as the academically gifted. Likewise, a defense must also require disclosure of what facially race-neutral methods, criteria, or formulae are applied to fill each category and the class as a whole.

But mere disclosure of targets and methods is not enough. Once a university discloses targets and methods, the Court should hold that a plaintiff has a prima facie case of discrimination if a universitys actual admissions results differ materially from the results that would be achieved if the purported methods were applied to the population at large. With a prima facie case established, the university can then seek to justify the deviation. Consistent with the Courts jurisprudence that protects fundamental rights from violation, any justification must be strictly necessary and narrowly tailored to achieve a superior educational outcome.

This burden-shifting framework would have the effect of making it all but impossible for universities to discriminate in admissions on the basis of race or any other factor. Even the dishonest and covert discrimination of the past fifty years would be untenable. Moreover, the framework would be a massive embarrassment to the equity regime. It would force out into the open the reality that groups differ in performance. It does not even matter what metrics the universities choose. They could abandon IQ substitutes like the SAT and admit students based on skill at playing hopscotchstill, group differences would inevitably emerge. The requirement that actual admissions results match the distribution of sought-after talents and characteristics in the population at large would effectively elevate natural inequalitya reality that the Founders and our constitutional order once took for grantedinto a constitutional principle.

Let utopians remain free to pursue their dreams of equality, as Robert Owen and others did theirs in the nineteenth century. But do not let them continue to employ the coercive powers of the state to impose their vision on others. Many say that the rising generation demands measures to ensure diversity, equity, and inclusion, and that institutions and companies that hope to recruit the best and brightest must comply with the equity regime. Fine, let woke college students make demands. But handing them the coercive power of our rule of law has been among the most irresponsible acts of recent decades. By requiring universities to justify in court any deviations from measurable inequalities, the Supreme Court can not only end government-protected racial discrimination but permanently discredit the doctrine of equity. Perhaps, after twenty-five years, it will no longer be necessary to continue the burden-shifting device. Only time can tell.

More radical theories. One can certainly imagine a more radical Court that is willing to take constitutional theories now considered off the wall and affix them to the wall of legitimate interpretation. Freedom of association, for example, is perhaps the most vital freedom of all in the American tradition of ordered liberty, yet it has been given short shrift by the Supreme Court, apart from a narrow category of expressive association. To take another example, an expansive definition of religion for establishment clause purposes would imply that public schools cannot teach divisive secular religions such as wokeness. A Supreme Court that manifested a will to lead our country away from its current path to woke tyrannya will that we very much need right nowcould recognize freedom of association as a fundamental right protected by the Fourteenth Amendments long-dormant Privileges or Immunities Clause, and it could use the Establishment Clause to cast doubt on the constitutionality of governing schools. Perhaps this seems a reach. But those who recognize the dangers posed by the coercive equity regime can certainly dream.

Americans often take solace in the thought that extremism must eventually bring a healthy reaction. The pendulum will swing back, they say. They assure themselves that what cannot go on must eventually come to an end. In reality, oppressive regimes can last indefinitely. The caste system in Indialike wokeness, a sacralized system of subordinationhas persisted for thousands of years. The doctrine of equity has already shown exceptional durability. For three generations, it has only advanced, paused, and advanced again. This is not because the doctrine of equity is popular. Given the chance, voters have rejected it, even in liberal bastions such as California. Rather, the doctrine of equity grinds on toward complete dominance because it has been awarded tremendous legal power to destroy dissenters. To defeat it will require leadership and the exercise of political power. The Supreme Court has the power. It only has to use it.

Frank Resartusteaches at a law school in the Northeast.

Image by Epsos via Creative Commons. Image cropped.

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Defeating the Equity Regime by Frank Resartus | Articles - First Things