ABA Gets Sued Over Scholarship That “Discriminates Against Whites”

What is this, a re-run episode?

You know the story. The American Alliance for Equal Rights is back again and they’ve set their sights on the ABA. You know the drill: yada yada yada, racial minorities took my spot, I didn’t even apply but I was chilled from doing so because of the language, stop this organization from spending their money on the subset of their choosing, on and on. Law360 has coverage:

According to the suit, the scholarship program is run by the ABA’s Diversity, Equity and Inclusion Center and provides students with $15,000 over their three years of law school. Only 20 to 25 students are chosen each year, and to be eligible, a student must be entering their first year of law school and be Black, Native American, Hispanic, Asian/Pacific Islander, or another racial or ethnic minority, the conservative group said.

“This blatant discrimination is not only unbecoming of an association of lawyers, but it’s also illegal,” the complaint said.

Illegal? Can’t the judge just tell the ABA to “facilitate” the end of the program so that the trains can keep running on time?

One of the things that I’m always suspicious of about these claims is the ethnic minority prong not being satisfied. People like to talk as if White is White is White, but that misses the ethnicity boat completely. It is damn near impossible to know what the actual case is because the person they’re suing on behalf of is a John Doe, but what if they’re Czech or Italian or Irish or Jewish or Greek…you get the point. While the complaint makes the claim that “[t]he ABA would not give the scholarship to a white student, no matter how badly that student needed financial assistance,” there are many ways that an applicant could shoehorn themselves in to the running for the $15k — they should be made to prove that they don’t qualify under any of the given prongs before they make arguments about how the requirements excluded them from even trying. Take Kim Kardashian for example. She’s not financially pressed by any means, but if she (or someone similarly situated) wanted to apply for the scholarship, she appears to be fair game. Sure she’s white, but her father is Armenian. Why wouldn’t that satisfy the ethnic minority prong? She may not ultimately get the scholarship, but its a much harder sell to argue that she was denied the chance.

The case is American Alliance For Equal Rights v. American Bar Association, 1:25-cv-03980, in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Illinois. You could follow up on it, but it doesn’t seem that much different from the Blum & Co. litigation we’ve seen before.

ABA Scholarship Illegally Bars White Applicants, Suit Says [Law360]

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 is learning to 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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