Court Says Atlanta Firm’s Grant Program, Exclusively for Black Women Entrepreneurs, Violates Civil Rights Law
The case is part of a trio of lawsuits filed by the American Alliance for Equal Rights targeting diversity programs in corporate America.
A federal appeals court has shot down a venture firm’s grant contest for Black-woman-owned businesses as discriminatory on the basis of race, yielding a win for litigant Edward Blum, who brought the case on behalf of his organization, the American Alliance for Equal Rights.
The 11th Circuit ruled in a 2-1 decision Monday that the Fearless Fund’s entrepreneur grant program is “substantially likely to violate” Section 1981 of the 1866 Civil Rights Act, which guarantees all people — regardless of race — the same right to make and enforce contracts.
The three-judge panel, which included two judges appointed by President Trump and one appointed by President Obama, also found the Atlanta firm unlikely to enjoy the First Amendment protection it had been previously offered by a district court. “The Alliance’s members would suffer irreparable injury,” the panel ruled, by being banned from entering the grant contest.
The ruling was a 2-1 decision. The dissenting judge, Robin Rosenbaum, argued that the Alliance has “shown nothing more than flopping on the field,” which she likened to a manufactured foul in a soccer game that ultimately awards the allegedly fouled player a penalty kick. None of the Alliance’s members “has a genuine interest in actually entering the Contest,” she asserted, so there is no real injury in the case.
The case is part of a trio of lawsuits that the American Alliance for Equal Rights has filed since August targeting diversity programs in corporate America. The organization sued two law firms, Perkins Coie in Dallas and Morrison & Foerster in Miami, over fellowships they offer to promote diversity that are available only to minority candidates.
The wave of litigation came two months after Mr. Blum, on behalf of Students for Fair Admissions, won an epic battle at the Supreme Court over race-conscious college admissions policies. The high court declared that the student admissions policies used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
