(film reel clattering) - Welcome to today's Ethnic Media Services' news, hosted by the Leadership Conference Education Fund.

I'm Sandy Close, director of Ethnic Media Services, which is honored to work with the Leadership Conference.

Today's briefing focuses on education and civil rights, what to expect in the year ahead.

[background music] Experts and advocates in the civil rights field will preview the education policy landscape ranging from Supreme Court challenges, to federal student loan debt cancellation, and affirmative action, as well as early childhood care and education.

Our speakers include our moderator, Liz King, senior program director for Education Equity for the Leadership Conference Education Fund; Genevieve... Genevieve Genzie Bonadies Torres, associate Director for Education Opportunities Project of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under Law; Michaele N. Turnage-Young, senior counsel for the Legal Defense Fund, LDF; AJ Link, policy analyst for Autistic Self-Advocacy Network, or ASAN.

This is an incredibly impressive lineup and we're grateful to all of you.

And now, I turn the microphone over to Liz King who will moderate today's briefing.

Thank you, Liz.

- Thank you, Sandy.

And, thank you to everyone who has joined us today.

My name is Liz King and I am the senior program director for Education Equity at the Leadership Conference Education Fund.

The Leadership Conference Education Fund builds public will for laws and policies that promote and protect the civil and human rights of every person in the United States.

The Education Fund was founded in 1969 as the education and research arm of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, the nation's-- our oldest and largest civil and human rights coalition of more than 230 national organizations.

Today, we are going to talk about the education and civil rights landscape in 2023.

The civil and human rights community works together every day to protect all students from discrimination and ensure equal opportunity in education.

We know that education policy decisions must be informed by the values, priorities, and experiences of marginalized people.

For too long people of color, Native people, LGBTQ people, people with disabilities, immigrants, religious minorities, English learners, girls, low-income people, and other marginalized people have had their stories told by someone else.

Their opportunity to attend a school that is warm, welcoming, and that prepares them for the full exercise of their social, political, and economic rights has been denied.

We are here today to talk about threats to equal opportunity and the need to advance justice and equity.

We will hear first about the significant harm Black and Latino students would face if the Supreme Court rejects the President's program to cancel student loan debt.

Then, we will hear about the need for the Supreme Court to uphold affirmative action policies that create the diverse campuses Americans believe in and which contribute to a multiracial democracy.

Next, we will hear about the need for safe, healthy, and inclusive schools that reject discriminatory and criminalizing practices.

We will also hear about the attacks on teaching about race, the efforts to whitewash history, and exclude LGBTQ children and families from their schools.

Finally, we will hear about the need to ensure access to equitable, high quality early care and education, and protect the civil rights of our youngest learners.

We hope that this will be the beginning of a conversation, and look forward to staying in touch in the year ahead.

Now, I'll turn it over to Genzie Bonadies Torres with the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights under Law.

Genzie?

- Thank you so much, Liz.

The COVID-19 pandemic was an unprecedented health, social, and economic crisis.

The Biden-Harris Administration's student debt relief plan is an urgently needed moral and lawful response.

The plan provides targeted relief for over 40 million working and middle class Americans whose family finances and entire livelihoods were devastated by the pandemic.

Without this relief, millions of borrowers would be pushed past the financial brink when student loan repayments restart.

And, among them are millions of borrowers of color who we know have been hardest hit by the pandemic.

This foreseeable spike in default would debilitate the credit of millions of borrowers blocking their ability to pay for basic necessities and preventing them from securing affordable housing, among other adverse outcomes.

The Higher Education Relief Opportunities for Students Act, or HEROES Act, authorizes the secretary of education to mitigate precisely these harms.

And yet, opponents with politicized and special interests have launched several lawsuits challenging the legality of this amply justified debt relief plan.

Most of these lawsuits have been dismissed, but two have made their way to the Supreme Court, Biden versus Nebraska, and the Department of Education versus Brown.

The cases have been expedited with oral arguments scheduled for February 28th.

Let me be clear, the debt relief plan faithfully adheres to the HEROES Act.

Specifically, the HEROES Act allows the secretary to take action in a national emergency, in this case, COVID-19, to make sure affected borrowers are not placed in a worse place financially because of that emergency.

Evidence shows that the debt relief plan achieves exactly these aims and key civil rights are on the line.

The Lawyers Committee spearheaded a "friend of the court" brief, or an amicus brief, along with 21 advocacy organizations that underscores how the stakes are especially high for people of color and particularly women of color, because COVID-19 has exacerbated racial disparities and inflicted acute harms on Black and Latinx borrowers.

To begin, Black and Latinx borrowers disproportionately shouldered economic setbacks from COVID-19.

Unemployment rates spiked for all lower income workers, but women of color faced the greatest losses with approximately one-out-of-five Latina and Black women abruptly finding themselves without work.

COVID-19 also took a disproportionate toll on the health of Black and Latinx communities whose infection and death rates were substantially higher than average.

Such losses further destabilize the ability of Black and Latinx families to meet basic needs, much less repay crippling student debt.

Moreover, the financial obstacles arising out of COVID-19 are amplified for Black and Latinx borrowers, because of preexisting racial disparities in wealth and student debt.

The volatile economic conditions created by COVID-19 forced many families to rely on existing wealth to serve as a safety net.

The Black and Latinx borrowers have far fewer financial means to fall back on due to discrimination in the labor market and generations of government sanctioned policies that prevented people of color from accumulating wealth.

While the typical white family today enjoys about $184,000 in family wealth, a typical Black family has about $23,000 and a typical Latinx family has $38,000.

Consequently, Black and Latinx students are forced to carry higher levels of student debt and simultaneously face even greater difficulty in paying off such debt due to the pandemic's aggravating effects.

Biden's debt relief plan promises to prevent severe economic fallout from the pandemic.

It provides relief to over 40 million lower income Americans and disaggregated by race, it's anticipated that approximately 50% of Latinx borrowers and 25% of Black borrowers will have their debt balances eliminated.

Additionally, it's estimated that the first $10,000 of relief will move over half a million Black borrowers from a negative to a positive net worth.

Altogether, the facts and the law support the Biden debt relief program and the Supreme Court should uphold it.

In addition to the debt relief cases, the educational and economic opportunities of students of color are under threat in the pending affirmative action cases against UNC and Harvard.

Michaele will be covering these cases in further detail, but I did want to highlight our client's important role in these cases.

The Lawyer's Committee currently represents a multiracial group of former applicants, students, and alumni at UNC, as well as at Harvard and UT-Austin who are defending their university's right to consider race as one of many factors to promote diversity and equal access.

Our clients put forth critical testimony at the trial level, which the district court heavily relied upon in upholding UNC's race-conscious policy.

And, more recently, the Supreme Court granted our client's oral argument time and my colleague, David Hinojosa, presented on their behalf, lifting up the voices of UNC students and alumni of color who speak directly and powerfully to the importance of considering their racialized experiences to fully comprehend their accomplishments, the profound benefits of the racial diversity they encountered once on campus, and how interacting across racial difference better prepared them to excel in our global workforce.

The Lawyers Committee stands in solidarity with the diverse group of stakeholders in both the affirmative action and the debt relief cases who are urging the Supreme Court to uphold the legality of the programs.

Both are fully consistent with statutory and constitutional authority.

They also strengthen our multiracial democracy by ensuring pathways to educational and economic opportunities remain open to students from all walks of life, including Black and brown students who have been shut out for far too long.

And, I will try to pass it back to Liz now!

- Next, we'll hear from Michaele Turnage-Young with the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, LDF.

Michaele?

- Thanks, Liz.

Thanks, Genzie.

So, my name is Michaele Turnage-Young.

I serve as senior counsel at the Legal Defense Fund.

As background, the Legal Defense Fund is a nonpartisan organization that has fought for equal access to higher education for more than 80 years.

LDF has been involved in every race-conscious admissions challenge to ever make it to the Supreme Court.

And, together with my colleagues, I represent 25 Harvard student alumni organizations comprised of more than 16,000 Black, white, Latinx, Native, and Asian American students and alumni as amici curiae in the Harvard lawsuit.

In both the Harvard case and the UNC case, the petitioner, SFFA, asked the court to change the law to ban the consideration of race in admissions.

SFFA also alleges that both Harvard and UNC failed to comply with existing law.

So, let me briefly discuss existing law.

Under 44 years of settled precedent, it is legally permissible for colleges and universities to consider race as one of many factors in admissions.

Bear in mind that the Supreme Court held that quotas were impermissible back in 1978.

So, we're not talking about quotas.

What we are talking about is the limited consideration of race as one of 40 factors in the UNC case and one of more than 100 factors in the Harvard case.

UNC is the oldest public university in the country.

As was the case with earlier challenges to the admissions policies of public universities, SFFA alleges that UNC violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution, by considering race as one of many factors in admissions.

Importantly, the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment applies to state actors like public universities.

It does not apply to private actors.

The Harvard case is the first challenge to a race-conscious admissions policy involving a private college to reach Supreme Court.

But, even though it is a private university, Harvard receives federal funding.

So, in the lawsuit, SFFA alleges that Harvard's consideration of race as one of many factors and admissions violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits federally funded programs from engaging in racial discrimination.

Unlike the UNC case, there's also an allegation in the Harvard case that Harvard engaged in intentional discrimination against Asian American applicants.

That claim is novel since in earlier admissions challenges, the claim was that the consideration of race in admissions harmed white applicants.

In both cases, the petitioner asked in their complaints that the schools be barred from allowing their admissions officers to become aware of the race of any applicant.

All of the lower courts issued 100-plus page rulings in favor of the schools.

In the Harvard case, the court held that Harvard's admissions policy survived strict scrutiny because it was narrowly tailored to achieve the compelling interest in the pursuit of the educational benefits of diversity.

In addition, while eight student and alumni witnesses testified about the importance of diversity, not one witness testified they had been discriminated against.

And, even though SFFA analyzed 480 admissions files, two-thirds of which were selected by SFFA, and data from about 150,000 applicants, SFFA did not present even a single admissions file or application that it contended reflected an applicant who would've been admitted absent discrimination.

Given this, the court found no evidence of intentional discrimination.

The U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed that decision.

In the UNC case, the district court likewise held a long bench trial, then held that UNC's admissions policy passed constitutional muster.

The Supreme Court decided to hear the UNC case before the appellate court could weigh in.

And, of course, as I'm sure most of you know, the Supreme Court heard five hours of oral argument on Halloween in 2022.

We heard from the oralists and the solicitor general that it continues to be of the utmost importance to our multiracial democracy that the pathways to leadership in our country be visibly open to people from all corners of our society.

A September 2022 nationwide poll found that 87% of respondents agreed that diverse learning environments enriched the college experience for everyone and better prepare students of all backgrounds for success in our increasingly global multiracial economy.

All students deserve a fair shot at getting a quality education, regardless of their income, where they grew up, or their racial or ethnic backgrounds.

But, unfortunately, while talent is everywhere in our country, opportunity is not.

Too many students of color must contend with systemic and interpersonal racism that detrimentally affects their educational opportunities.

It is important that colleges and universities continue to be allowed to consider the full context of applicants' experiences, including the way that racism artificially depresses the prospects of many hardworking, talented Black, Latinx, Native, and underserved Asian American students so that everyone has a fair shot.

- Thanks, Michaele.

A reminder to our speakers to speak slowly!

I know we feel passionate and enthusiastic about all of these issues.

Next, we'll hear from AJ Link with the Autistic Self-Advocacy Network.

AJ?

- Thank you so much, Liz.

My name is AJ Link.

I am going to talk about threats to safe, healthy, and inclusive schools.

And, the first thing that I would like to do is present the eight principles of a safe, healthy, and inclusive school climate provided by the Leadership Conference.

Principle one is to ensure the rights of our students.

Principle two is to encourage schools to implement comprehensive supportive discipline practices.

Principle three is to address childhood trauma.

Principle four is to enhance protections against harassment and discriminations in schools.

Principle five is to ensure accountability through accurate and comprehensive data collection.

Principle six is to invest in school infrastructure that supports positive school climates.

Principle seven is to eliminate school-based law enforcement.

And, principle eight is to eliminate threats to students' health and safety.

So, what can we do in this legislative environment?

Well, there's a suite of bills that the Leadership Conference has endorsed and ASAN has signed onto those.

And, those are the Counseling Not Criminalization in School Act, which ends federal funding for school-based law enforcement and redirects those funds to counselors, teachers, and positive supports for children in schools.

There's the Keep All Students Safe Act, which ends seclusion and places significant guardrails around the use of restraints in schools.

There's the protection of our-- Protecting Our Students in Schools Act, which ends corporal punishment in schools.

The Safe Schools Improvement Act which establishes federal standards to protect every student from bullying and harassment in K-through-12 schools.

And, the Ending PUSHOUT Act which supports alternative to exclusionary discipline in schools and prevents criminalization and pushout of students from schools and especially student-- student-?

Girl students of color.

So, these bills are in opposition to things like threat assessment, which are extremely dangerous.

As a disabled advocate, we are very much against any type of school hardening bills which puts the threat and safety of our students in danger.

All students deserve safe, healthy, and inclusive school climates.

Every student deserves the opportunity to attend positive school environments that support their rights, protect against harassment and discrimination, and ensure their health and safety.

Thank you so much, Liz.

- Thanks, AJ!

I saw there was a question from SEMA that talked about the underrepresentation of South Asian Americans in the discussion about student loan debt cancellation.

Genzie mentioned that one of the problems we have here is a data problem.

I know that there has been a lot of conversation around the census.

We know that without data communities become invisible.

Unfortunately, we do not have enough data about Asian American student loan holders, and especially within that, the diversity of Asian Americans, and the diversity of Asian American student experiences with respect to education and student loan debt.

So, we'll up the-- Lift that.

See if there's any additional follow-up question on that.

Also, Vince?

We saw your question that Michaele answered in the chat about the distinction between quotas and what is currently allowed under the legal system to see if there's any follow-up questions around that.

And then, we'll encourage folks if they have any other questions to include them in the chat.

- There are questions.

I think we're all digesting the legal consequences.

And, a very important question from Orhan Akkurt is [struggles] [reads chat] "what happens if the "debt cancellation does move forward?

"How will the entire system be affected?

"If debt relief is actually "allowed to move forward, "what positive changes do you see?

"And, if it isn't, "what's the worst thing where we should expect?"

- So, if debt relief is allowed to move forward, then over 40 million borrowers would be eligible for applying for relief.

I have to pull the exact numbers on how many have already applied, but it's in the millions.

It's-?

Might be 16 million.

It might be above that by now.

And, as a reminder, those who qualify are those with individual incomes of $125,000 or less, or jointly of $250,000 or less.

And then, Pell Grant recipients, which is a means-based program.

So, those who are Pell Grant recipients are lower income, would be eligible for an additional $10,000.

As I highlighted in my remarks, for many borrowers who are the most in need of this relief, this can eliminate their debt entirely, which means that they can focus on paying the other basic needs in their life: food, housing, getting their kids through school.

For other borrowers, it may not eliminate entirely their relief, but the department found that it would substantially reduce their monthly payments to an extent that would mitigate their likelihood of default and delinquency.

And, as I mentioned, default has really severe and serious consequences.

By ruining somebody's credit, it makes them at risk for secure housing.

It can imperil their employment.

It means that it is very difficult for them to get basic necessities in their life.

And, the research that the department relied upon shows that, after long payment pauses like this one, during national emergencies, there are spikes in default and delinquency.

And, this plan is specifically designed to avoid those types of spikes that are linked to the pandemic.

By contrast, having less debt is linked with better outcomes, which perhaps is not surprising.

Everything from... being able to secure safe housing to better employment opportunities, and more.

So, I will leave it there for now.

But, I do think that the economic security of so many Americans are on the line and that it's particularly crucial for people of color.

[background music] Because, again, they don't have the same safety net of wealth and they do have substantial debt.

- Thank you.

Thank you to all of you and to the Leadership Conference Education Fund, Mattie Goldman.

This has been an amazing opportunity for us to hear from people on the front lines with details and perspectives [background music] on what is gonna be critical to improving education in 2023.

You've really sharpened our lens.

We are very grateful and thank you.

We hope we can come back to you in six months and revisit where we're at.

Thank you very, very much.

This conference is now adjourned and have a great rest of your day!

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