In a decision likely to hinder some antidiscrimination lawsuits in higher education, the U.S. Supreme Court last week barred private citizens from suing federally supported state agencies over policies that have a “disparate impact” on members of racial or ethnic minority groups.
A deeply divided court ruled 5 to 4 that individuals do not have a right, under federal law, to sue public colleges and other state agencies that receive federal funds over policies that seem to help or harm people of a particular race or ethnicity.
Under the court’s ruling, private citizens can successfully challenge such policies only by showing that the state agencies discriminated intentionally, which generally is much more difficult to prove.
The majority opinion, written by Justice Antonin Scalia, said that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the civil-rights law at issue in the case, does not specifically give private citizens the right to sue to ensure that its provisions are enforced. Therefore, such suits are prohibited, because “private rights of action to enforce federal law must be created by Congress,” the opinion said.
Theodore M. Shaw, associate director and counsel for the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund Inc., said the ruling puts the onus on civil-rights groups that file lawsuits challenging the actions of state agencies as racially or ethnically biased to prove outright, deliberate discrimination.
“We are going to have to look at all of the cases on our docket,” and “we may have to go and prove intent, where possible,” Mr. Shaw said.
Although federal agencies continue to have the right to challenge the actions of state agencies as having a disparate impact, it is unclear how willing the Bush administration will be to do so. The Clinton administration faced intense criticism when the Education Department’s Office for Civil Rights drafted regulations that warned college admissions offices not to rely too heavily on standardized tests that may be biased against minority students or women. The civil-rights office subsequently softened its language to simply urge colleges to use the tests fairly.
The case before the Supreme Court last week involved dueling interpretations of Title VI, which bars any program receiving federal financial assistance from discriminating against someone based on race or national origin.
Title VI includes provisions that direct federal agencies that distribute funds to public programs to draw up rules, and take other necessary steps, to ensure that the money does not support discriminatory activities. In response, federal agencies have not only barred programs that receive federal funds from engaging in intentional discrimination, but also directed the programs not to take actions that unfairly or unnecessarily benefit or burden members of certain racial or ethnic groups.
Private citizens have cited federal regulations drafted in response to Title VI in lawsuits challenging the legality of actions of public colleges and other federally financed agencies.
For example, a pending lawsuit against the University of California system charges that its admissions criteria have a disparate impact on minority students who have less access to high schools with Advanced Placement courses. Meanwhile, in a lawsuit pending in a federal district court, black athletes have challenged the National Collegiate Athletic Association’s eligibility standards, which rely heavily on standardized test scores, as having a disparate and negative impact on minority athletes.
Last week’s ruling dealt with a lawsuit challenging the Alabama Department of Public Safety’s decision to administer its driver’slicense tests only in English. Alabama had petitioned the Supreme Court to take up the case after the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit struck down its testing policy as discriminatory in 1999.
In his opinion holding that the plaintiff in the case lacked legal standing to sue the Alabama agency, Justice Scalia was joined by Chief Justice William H. Rehnquist and Justices Anthony M. Kennedy, Sandra Day O’Connor, and Clarence Thomas.
Justice John Paul Stevens was joined by Stephen G. Breyer, Ruth Bader Ginsburg, and David H. Souter in a dissent that accused the majority of ignoring Supreme Court precedent and the intent of Congress in passing the 1964 civil-rights act. “The majority’s statutory analysis does violence to both the text and structure of Title VI,” the dissent said.
Conservative legal-advocacy organizations had submitted briefs to the Supreme Court arguing that the federal government lacked any standing under Title VI to draft regulations prohibiting state agencies from taking actions that have a disparate impact on members of minority groups.
The Supreme Court did not rule on that question. But Richard A. Samp, the chief counsel for the Washington Legal Foundation, which submitted one such brief, said, “I suspect that the Bush administration will be in no hurry to enforce any of [those regulations].”
http://chronicle.com Section: Government & Politics Page: A25
