We have covered several cases in which federal courts have issued injunctions halting racially discriminatory Biden administration policies meant to advantage non-whites over whites:
The Wall Street Journal reports that the Department of Justice, which represents the administration in defending these discriminatory policies, appears to be signaling A Retreat on Racial Preferences:
The Biden Administration has been losing in court on its racially biased policies, and last week something remarkable happened. It gave up. Without explanation, the Justice Department declined to appeal a federal court injunction against a discriminatory loan-forgiveness program for farmers.Democrats in their March spending bill established a $3.8 billion program to forgive loans for “socially disadvantaged” farmers. The Department of Agriculture interpreted this to include individuals “who are one or more of the following: Black/African American, American Indian, Alaskan native, Hispanic/Latino, Asian, or Pacific Islander.” White farmers need not apply.More than a dozen lawsuits have been filed challenging the USDA’s racial preferences, and three so far have resulted in preliminary injunctions by district courts in Florida, Wisconsin and Texas. Justice failed to appeal the Florida injunction before its 60-day deadline last week and hasn’t contested the others.
I checked the PACER docket in the Florida case, and there is no indication of an appeal of the injunction.
This does not signal that the Biden administration, which has fully embraced the Critical Race Theory approach to policy, has changed its mind. Rather, this is a tactical retreat. The policies were legally indefensible, so DOJ didn’t want to run the risk of a loss in the Supreme Court that could strike at the heart of the “equity” practice of discriminating on the basis of race to remedy past discrimination.
WSJ notes:
Why? Perhaps it thinks it will lose on appeal and doesn’t want to risk taking these cases all the way to the Supreme Court….Such strategic maneuvering isn’t unprecedented. Tom Perez as head of Justice’s Civil Rights Division during Barack Obama’s first term pressured the city of St. Paul to withdraw a case at the High Court that concerned the legality of statistical disparate-impact analysis in housing. He feared an adverse ruling would undermine the government’s ability to bring cases against bank lending decisions.Justice may defend other racial-preference policies, but the right response is for the Administration to stop discriminating by race.
Stop discriminating on the basis of race? That’s something the Biden administration is about to agree to, but for now, it’s licking its judicial wounds and trying to find a way to discriminate that will survive in court.
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