On June 29, the Supreme Court of the United States effectively ended affirmative action by ruling that race could no longer be considered a factor in college admissions. The challenge had been brought by a group called Students for Fair Admissions. Its founder, conservative legal activist Edward Blum, “do[es] not believe” in systemic racism, according to an interview in the New York Times, and has spent years trying to weed out the concept of racial equity from American law. Less than two months after his legal victory against higher education, Blum turned to his next mark: diversity fellowships. In two querulous, virtually duplicate lawsuits, the plaintiff, American Alliance for Equal Rights—another Blum-led outfit—accused the law firms Morrison Foerster and Perkins Coie of perpetuating “rank discrimination” by earmarking certain fellowships for minoritized candidates.
The two defendants took the challenge very differently. In a statement to CNN, Perkins Coie pledged to “defend this lawsuit vigorously.” Morrison Foerster, which calls itself “MoFo” and won a 2023 “Outstanding Firm for Diversity & Inclusion” award from a legal research company, folded immediately and removed any specific references to race or queerness from the language of the job posting. However, their website’s robust workplace-culture page that trumpets the many faces of “MoFo Diversity”—including the banner announcing their big award—remains unchanged.
