A reader sent along a curious email he received as a member of the New Jersey State Bar Association (emphasis added):
NJSBA Accepting Petitions for Positions
The New Jersey State Bar Association is accepting petitions from members for the positions of at-large trustee and second vice president. Both positions are for full terms and will begin in May. The at-large trustee seat is designated for a woman….
The association’s Nominating Committee had selected Angela White Dalton to serve as its second vice president and Mitzy Galis-Menendez as an at-large trustee. Both terms were to begin May. Earlier this month, both were confirmed as judges of the Superior Court and withdrew from consideration….
A similar announcement is on the NJSBA website.
The reader was upset and wondered:
As best I can tell, there is no position reserved for a man. Now I am no constitutional lawyer (tax actually), but that sure appears to be discrimination on the basis of gender, clear as day. I was a bit surprised at how open and blatant this preference was.
The seat is in fact reserved exclusively for a woman. This is one of 8 “At-Large” seats on the 49 seat Board of Trustees of the NJSBA. The other 41 seats are open to anyone, and appointed through committee and county bar associations and from the Executive Committee members.
The reservation of At-Large spots appears to be an outgrowth of a July 2010 resolution expanding the size of the Board of Trustee to achieve greater diversity. The NJSBA Bylaws currently contain the following provision (emphasis added):
(f) Every At-Large Trustee shall be elected from, among and by the general members of the Association to represent segments of the membership not adequately represented on the Board of Trustees. The designation of these underrepresented segments of the membership to be considered when nominating candidates for the At-Large Trustee seats shall be made by the Board of Trustees at the first Board of Trustees meeting following the Annual Meeting each year. Nothing in this section shall be construed to mean that a member from any underrepresented segment can be prohibited from serving on the Board of Trustees because another member from that same underrepresented group is already serving as a Trustee. The purpose of the At-Large Trustee positions is to promote inclusion of as many underrepresented segments of the membership on the Board of Trustees as possible. Any interpretation of this section of the Bylaws shall be consistent with that purpose.
For 2012-2013, the designations were as follows:
Under-represented group designation: The trustees determined that an at-large seat on the board should be designated for a member from each the following under-represented groups: Hispanic; Asian-Pacific; African-American; gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender; lawyers over the age of 70; and women. In addition, two seats will be open for a member from any of those groups.
The Board of Trustees until recently contained 11 female members, but two of those spots are vacant because the women were appointed to judgeships.
I reached out to the NJSBA to get its position on why its diversity efforts had been so unsuccessful that the NJSBA felt it necessary to designate At-Large seats for designated groups, and whether the NJSBA had received any complaints about such process.
The media person who responded to my inquiries indicated that only the President of the NJSBA, Kevin McCann, could speak on the record about it. NJSBA President McCann did not respond to multiple requests for an interview.
Following up on the reader’s concerns, I don’t know if reserving trustee spots for designated groups is illegal. It certainly raises questions.
Nothing prevents persons in the designated groups from earning their way onto the Board of Trustees the traditional way of slogging through committee work and county bar associations. Indeed, such efforts from persons in such groups are welcomed and encouraged.
So what is it about the NJSBA which rendered its substantial diversity efforts so ineffective that it needed to engage in racial/gender/ethnic/sexual orientation set-asides? Aren’t the set-asides just a cop-out for a more introspective look at the NJSBA’s diversity failure?
What message does the NJSBA think this sends to people who are not in those groups and whose only way to earn a spot on the Board of Trustees is through committee and county bar work? Although quite obviously directed at the white males who are dominant on the Board of Trustees, the set-asides also exclude others — such as Native American heterosexual males under the age of 70.
Also, qualification is based on a self-identification which — as we know from a certain former NJSBA woman of color who happened to nurse her way through the Bar exam and now is a United States Senator — is not always accurate or certain.
Has the NJSBA thought through whether engaging in discrimination as to the Board of Trustees is the best way to achieve diversity? Indeed, there is no reason to suspect that the NJSBA has discriminated against persons in the designated groups, so the NJSBA is not seeking to compensate for past discriminatory practices, it’s simply using set-asides that would be of doubtful legality in other contexts.
Discrimination to achieve diversity is an issue the courts and society are struggling with in college admissions. I wonder if NJSBA had those frank discussions when it adopted these set-asides.
These are all questions I would have liked to ask the NJSBA, but it’s not talking. At least not to me.
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Comments
Picked a couple of CLE conferences this year that took me into a much broader spectrum of practicing attorneys than is the norm. Watching what happens when you now have years of 3rd and 4th tier schools and their average students who passed the bar and the entire sense of what will keep their bread buttered is more litigation. More regulation. More government agencies.
Absolutely no sense whatsoever that these are in fact an expense that harms productivity. I asked a couple of questions as what the speaker said and my experience made me want to follow up. Had people coming up afterwards asking me who I was and what I did.
If practicing lawyers find informed apt questions unusual, we really have just been turning out more and more champions of Statism and Slow Growth. This NJ statement is the mentality of just another interest group. There still are lawyers who treat it as a profession but for too many it is a credential they thought would enable them to make a good living. And now it is a credential being purchased with mounds of debt.
Bravo!
“Discrimination to achieve diversity” suggests that “to achieve diversity” could be a justification for discrimination. I do not see diversity as an approriate goal. Rather, the quest for diversity is an integral part of identity politics that negatively affects ever increasing amounts of our society. Just last week my California middle-school granddaughter had a substitute teacher who was not conversant in English, but who helps the school-district’s diversity figures.
Diversity is indeed the goal. However, their conception of diversity is fundamentally flawed. In this context, the only diversity they should be concerned with is related to individuals and merit. Instead they describe a sponsor of corruption, which denigrates individual dignity, recognizes select rights, and is likely to engender a dysfunctional outcome.
They are manufacturing the obstacles which one day will require reasonable people to overcome. In the meantime, it’s Tutsi exploit Hutu exploit Tutsi exploit … which is politically, economically, and socially profitable for select minority interests.
Does diversity include diversity of opinion on the definition of diversity? The whole progressive liberal mindset is flawed. One only needs to look at Senator “Check the box, win a prize” Warren in order to understand this.
….who, by the way, was [allegedly] nursing a baby, whilst taking the Nuh Joisey Bar exam. That was before she was a Cherokee.
/sarcasm
By the way, just so y’all know. Today, is Texas Independence. On March 2, 1836, 177 years ago, the Republic of Texas was declared by the delegates meeting at Washington-on-the-Brazos.
Congratulations!
Not too many years after 1836, the man who first brought my family name to these shores settled in Texas.
[…] Jacobson at Legal Insurrection has up a terrific post on “Saturday Night Card Game (NJ Bar Assn excludes young heterosexual white males from At-Large […]
It’s not just New Jersey. Here, the new Florida Bar Leadership Academy. Veiled more cleverly. Professional pic required.
Believe it or not, the Texas State Bar requires that 4 positions on its Board of Directors be reserved for minorities. This is clearly unconstitutional as it is a naked quota system for an administrative agency of the judicial branch of the Texas state gov’t. Nevertheless, there it is in Texas. Who knows how many other states are doing this.
See Link
Sec. 81.020. BOARD OF DIRECTORS. (a) The governing body of the state bar is the board of directors.
(b) The board is composed of:
(1) the officers of the state bar;
(2) the president, president-elect, and immediate past president of the Texas Young Lawyers Association;
(3) not more than 30 members of the state bar elected by the membership from their district as determined by the board;
(4) six persons appointed by the supreme court and confirmed by the senate who are not attorneys and who do not have, other than as consumers, a financial interest in the practice of law; and
(5) four minority member directors appointed by the president as provided by Subsection (d).
(c) Elected members serve three-year terms. Nonattorney members serve staggered terms of the same length as terms of elected board members. The supreme court shall annually appoint two nonattorney members, with at least one of the two from a list of at least five names submitted by the governor. Appointments to the board shall be made without regard to the race, color, disability, sex, religion, age, or national origin of the appointees. A person who has served more than half of a full term is not eligible for reappointment to the board.
(d) The president of the state bar appoints the minority member directors, subject to confirmation by the board of directors. In making appointments under this subsection, the president shall attempt to appoint members of the different minority groups listed in Section 81.002(7). Minority member directors serve three-year terms. To be eligible for appointment as a minority member director, a person must:
(1) be a minority member of the bar;
(2) not be serving as an elected director at the time of appointment; and
(3) not be serving as a minority member director at the time of appointment.
NJ Bar at-large trustee seat: designated for tokens only.