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Edward Blum (litigant)

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For the architect, see Edward Blum (architect).
Edward Jay Blum
Born
Edward Jay Blum

January 9, 1952
Benton Harbor, Michigan, U.S.
EducationUniversity of Texas at Austin (BA)
State University of New York at New Paltz
Political partyRepublican

Edward Jay Blum (born 1952) is an American conservative legal strategist known for his activism against affirmative action based on race and ethnicity.[1] He connects potential plaintiffs with attorneys who are willing to represent them in "test cases" which he tries to use to set legal precedents. He is the director of the Project for Fair Representation which he founded in 2005. There is a claim that he is sole member of the Project, but this is disputed.[2] According to its website, the Project focuses specifically on voting, education, contracting, employment, racial quotas, and racial reparations.[3] The Harvard Crimson reported that his work is funded by conservative trusts and foundations, including Donors Trust, the Searle Freedom Trust, the Sarah Scaife Foundation, and The 85 Fund.[4]

Since the 1990s, Blum has been heavily involved in bringing eight cases to the United States Supreme Court.[5] He was a key figure in the Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College lawsuit.

Early life and education

Blum was born in 1952 into a Jewish family in Benton Harbor, Michigan, where his parents owned and operated a shoe store.[6] He graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1973. He then studied at the State University of New York at New Paltz. He describes his parents as generally left-wing liberals who supported Democratic presidents like Franklin Roosevelt and Harry S. Truman and that he was, eventually, "the first Republican my mother ever met".[7] He has said that the anti-Semitic discrimination his family experienced during his youth helped form his beliefs.[8]

Political activism

While working as a stockbroker in Houston, Texas, in the early 1980s, he became involved in the neoconservatism movement. In 1990, he realized that the Democratic incumbent in his congressional district, Craig Anthony Washington, was running unopposed, so decided to run against him for the Republican Party. During that campaign, Blum and his wife Lark went door-knocking and realized that the boundaries of their district erratically divided streets based on ethnicity, with the suspected purpose to gerrymander a majority African-American district in order to grant increased voting power to minorities.[9] Blum eventually lost the congressional race. But he and others filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas, claiming that the racially gerrymandered districts violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The case, Bush v. Vera, went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Blum's favor.[6]

Blum holds a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) where his areas of research include civil rights policy, affirmative action, multiculturalism, and redistricting. He wrote the 2007 book The Unintended Consequences of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act.

His litigation includes United States Supreme Court cases Bush v. Vera (1996), Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder (2009), Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), Shelby County v. Holder (2013), Evenwel v. Abbott (2016), and Fisher v. University of Texas II (2016).

In Shelby County, the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which subjected certain states and parts of states to federal scrutiny when they tried to modify voting procedures.[10] This scrutiny, known as "preclearance", was intended to prevent states from enacting voting procedures that disproportionately burden racial minorities. After unsuccessfully lobbying Congress to modify the preclearance rules in the Act's 2006 reauthorization, Blum set out to challenge the Act's constitutionality in court. He wanted to change or eliminate the law because it had led to the pro-minority gerrymandering which he encountered in the 1990s when he ran for Congress.[9][11]

In Evenwel, Texas voters sued Texas in a constitutional test case. Texas, like other states, divides its state legislative districts in a way that equalizes the total population of each district. However, some districts have more eligible voters than others because they have fewer minors, non-citizen immigrants, and convicted felons. The plaintiffs contended that this discriminates against voters in districts with high numbers of eligible voters, since each person's vote has less power.[12] They wanted the Supreme Court to mandate that districts be drawn based on voter-eligible population rather than total population. In an April 2016 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Texas' district scheme.[13]

The Fisher case, which challenged the University of Texas's consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process, was decided at the Supreme Court in 2013 and again in 2016. The first time, the Court bolstered the legal standard that universities must satisfy if they wish to consider race, emphasizing that the use of race is only permissible if race-neutral alternatives would be ineffective at producing campus diversity.[14] The second time, the Court applied the heightened legal standard to UT's admission policy, concluding that it passes muster and upholding it.[15]

Blum has challenged race-conscious admissions policies at other universities, claiming that they do not comply with the strict legal standard set forth in Fisher.[16] To that end, he founded Students for Fair Admissions, an offshoot of the Project on Fair Representation. This organization seeks to recruit students who have been rejected by selective universities and file lawsuits on their behalf.[17] Specifically, Blum targeted Harvard University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He set up websites called harvardnotfair.org,[18] uncnotfair.org,[19] and uwnotfair.org[20] to attract plaintiffs. Students for Fair Admissions, led by Blum, filed federal lawsuits against Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill in November 2014. (SFFA has not sued UW-Madison thus far). On October 1, 2019, the Court ruled in favor of Harvard University. In the 130-page ruling, Judge Allison D. Burroughs found that the University did not discriminate on the basis of race, did not engage in racial balancing or the use of quotas, and did not place too much emphasis on race when considering an applicant’s admissions file. She also wrote that, "Harvard has demonstrated that no workable and available race-neutral alternatives would allow it to achieve a diverse student body while still maintaining its standards for academic excellence."[21] SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court to review both the First Circuit's decision in the Harvard case, and a similar decision from the Middle District of North Carolina, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of NC, et al., which focused on the impact on both Caucasian and Asian American applicants at the University of North Carolina and which had been decided in the school's favor in October 2021. On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court issued a decision that, by a vote of 6–2, reversed the lower court ruling. In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts held that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional.[22]

Lawsuits against diversity requirements in businesses

Blum is the president of the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, which is the plaintiff in lawsuits challenging diversity requirements for boards of certain publicly traded companies.[23] The group sued to challenge California's race and gender quotas,[24] and Nasdaq's comply-or-explain rule.[25] California's race and gender quotas were found to be unconstitutional, and struck down.[26][27]

Blum founded the Texas group American Alliance for Equal Rights, which in 2023 filed a lawsuit against Fearless Fund, a venture capital fund that supports Black women business owners. Fearless Fund, founded by Keshia Knight Pulliam, Ayana Parsons, and Arian Simone, awards grants to Black women who are owners of small businesses through one of its programs. Blum's lawsuit challenges the legality of the grantmaking program under Section 1981 of the Civil Rights Act of 1866.[28]

Works

  • Blum, Edward (2007). The Unintended Consequences of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act. AEI Press. ISBN 9780844742571.

See also

References

  1. ^ Smith, Morgan (February 23, 2012). "One Man Standing Against Race-Based Laws". The New York Times. Retrieved April 4, 2016.
  2. ^ The Absurd, Enduring Myth of the “One-Man” Campaign to Abolish Affirmative Action
  3. ^ "Project on Fair Representation". Project on Fair Representation.
  4. ^ {{cite web|url=https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2022/10/28/donors-sffa-conservative-trusts/%7Ctitle=SFFA Funded by Large Conservative Trusts, Public Filings Show}]
  5. ^ Savage, David (December 22, 2015). "Conservative legal strategist has no office or staff, just a surprising Supreme Court track record". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  6. ^ a b Biskupic, Joan (December 4, 2012). "Special Report: Behind U.S. race cases, a little-known recruiter". Reuters. Retrieved July 4, 2016.
  7. ^ "The Imperfect Plaintiffs" (Podcast). Radiolab. WNYC. June 28, 2016.
  8. ^ Hartocollis, Anemona (November 19, 2017). "He Took On the Voting Rights Act and Won. Now He's Taking On Harvard". The New York Times. ISSN 0362-4331. Retrieved May 14, 2023.
  9. ^ a b "Decade in review: One man's crusade against race-based policies". SCOTUSblog. December 30, 2019. Retrieved December 1, 2020.
  10. ^ Barnes, Robert (June 25, 2013). "Supreme Court stops use of key part of Voting Rights Act". The Washington Post. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  11. ^ "SCOTUSblog On Camera: Edward Blum (Complete)". YouTube. SCOTUSBlog. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  12. ^ Lithwick, Dahlia (December 8, 2015). "What Exactly Does "One Person, One Vote" Mean Anyway?". Slate. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  13. ^ "Evenwel v. Abbott, Governor of Texas" (PDF). US Supreme Court. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  14. ^ "Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin" (PDF). US Supreme Court. Supreme Court of the United States. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  15. ^ "Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin" (PDF). US Supreme Court. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  16. ^ "Edward Blum Speaks about the Legal Battle against Harvard University". youtube.com. Houston Chinese Alliance. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  17. ^ "Project on Fair Representation Files Suits against Harvard and UNC". Students For Fair Admissions. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  18. ^ "Harvard University Not Fair". Not Fair Harvard. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  19. ^ "Not Fair: UNC". The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill Not Fair. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  20. ^ "Not Fair: UW". The University of Wisconsin at Madison Not Fair. Retrieved August 1, 2016.
  21. ^ Walsh, Colleen (October 2019). "Judge upholds Harvard's admissions policy". news.harvard.edu/gazette. Harvard University. Retrieved October 1, 2019.
  22. ^ Totenberg, Nina (June 29, 2023). "Supreme Court guts affirmative action, effectively ending race-conscious admissions". NPR. Archived from the original on June 29, 2023. Retrieved June 30, 2023.
  23. ^ "Together we can".
  24. ^ "California Race, Gender Quotas for Boards Face Legal Test (1)".
  25. ^ "SEC Approves Nasdaq "Comply-or-Explain" Proposal for Board Diversity". August 26, 2021.
  26. ^ Goldberg, Nicholas (May 17, 2022). "Column: California's law requiring women on corporate boards was just struck down. I'm glad". Los Angeles Times. Retrieved July 8, 2023.
  27. ^ Courts decide California can’t mandate corporate board diversity
  28. ^ Raymond, Nate (August 2, 2023). "Conservative activist behind US affirmative action cases sues venture capital fund". Reuters.

Further reading

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