{"id":2266,"date":"2024-10-28T20:15:19","date_gmt":"2024-10-29T00:15:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-22-issue-2\/race-and-regulatory-equity\/"},"modified":"2025-05-12T11:11:30","modified_gmt":"2025-05-12T15:11:30","slug":"race-and-regulatory-equity","status":"publish","type":"page","link":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/in-print-2\/volume-22-issue-2\/race-and-regulatory-equity\/","title":{"rendered":"Race and Regulatory Equity"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\">As Harvard and universities nationwide redesign their admissions programs after Students for Fair Admissions v. President &amp; Fellows of Harvard College<span class=\"s1\">1 <\/span>they will need to navigate trip wires of regulation.<span class=\"s1\">2<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">From the start, President Biden has enacted numerous executive orders promoting racial equity across government, including the Civil Rights Act, Title VI [hereinafter Title VI] expansions in higher education. During his first month in office, President Biden enacted an executive order (January 2021) that seeks across-the-government measures \u201cto advance racial equity and support for underserved communities\u201d<span class=\"s1\">3 <\/span>and a more general Memorandum on Modernizing Regulatory Review (2021) that contains provisions related to equity.<span class=\"s1\">4 <\/span>In spring 2023, he issued a more specific order that civil rights agencies shall \u201ccomprehensively\u201d and \u201caffirmatively\u201d use their respective civil rights authorities \u201cto prevent and address discrimination and advance equity for all, including to increase effects of civil rights enforcement . . . consistent with applicable law\u201d (February 2023).<span class=\"s1\">5<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">To implement these policies, President Biden has called on universities to end the practice of legacy admissions and has tasked the Department of Education with considering whether legacy preferences limit opportunities.<span class=\"s1\">6 <\/span>In turn, the Department has opened an investigation specifically reviewing Harvard\u2019s legacy preferences to see if they violate civil rights laws such as Title VI. These investigations are prompted by what may seem like strange bedfellows: civil rights organizations in a NAACP LDF report (November 2023) and conservative opponents of race-based affirmative action who seem to recognize the difficulty of defending legacy preferences while challenging race-based preferences.<span class=\"s1\">7<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\">Setting aside for the moment the Constitutional issues and statutory intricacies of the affirmative action lawsuit,<span class=\"s1\">8 <\/span>what is the proper role of regulatory agencies in implementing equity orders? More specifically, what is their role with regard to higher education admissions, in the post-SFFA v. Harvard landscape of racial equity?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/23\/2024\/10\/GT-GLPP240023.pdf\">Continue reading.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>As Harvard and universities nationwide redesign their admissions programs after Students for Fair Admissions v. President &amp; Fellows of Harvard College1 they will need to navigate trip wires of regulation.2 [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":10127,"featured_media":0,"parent":2080,"menu_order":4,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","template":"abstract.php","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":"","_tec_slr_enabled":"","_tec_slr_layout":""},"class_list":["post-2266","page","type-page","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"ticketed":false,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2266","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/page"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/10127"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2266"}],"version-history":[{"count":6,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2266\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2343,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2266\/revisions\/2343"}],"up":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/pages\/2080"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.law.georgetown.edu\/public-policy-journal\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2266"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}