(film reel clattering) - So, welcome to today's Ethnic Media Services Zoom news briefing.

I'm Pilar Marrero, and I'm assistant editor of EMS.

Our topic today focuses on [background music] litigators for affirmative action, reflect on next steps.

We have invited litigators who argued on behalf of affirmative action before the Supreme Court to reflect on the Court's ruling and its broader impact.

They will also discuss possible next steps in the legal drive for racial equality or equity including a lawsuit against legacy admissions at Harvard.

In the litigators panel, we have Jin Hee Lee, director of Strategic Initiatives at the Legal Defense Fund; Francisca Fajana, director of Racial Justice Strategy at LatinoJustice; John C. Yang, president and executive director of Asian-Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC; and Chavis Jones, associate counsel of the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights Under the Law.

Alright.

So, the Supreme Court issued rulings and two lawsuits and effectively ended affirmative action programs in college and university admissions.

Before I invite each of our panelists to reflect back on that decision, we invite and warmly welcome our special guest for today, Congresswoman Judy Chu of the 28th Congressional District of California.

Please welcome, Congresswoman.

The stage is yours.

- Well, thank you so much.

It's my honor to join today's call with our partners Asian-Americans Advancing Justice, the Legal Defense Fund, Latino Justice, and Lawyers Committee to discuss the impacts of last week's Supreme Court decision on affirmative action and the next steps our coalitions must take.

But, I want to tell you that immediately after the decision the Tri-Caucus made up of us, the Congressional Asian Pacific Caucus, the Congressional Black Caucus, and the Congressional Hispanic Caucus stood together to oppose the decisions by the Supreme Court redistricting-- restricting the consideration of race and higher education admissions.

To be clear, these rulings are a setback for all communities of color.

As we've seen with this term's decisions on affirmative action and student debt relief, the Supreme Court is more interested in making higher education attainable for primarily the wealthy and well-connected.

On the other hand, the Court is creating new hurdles for those from historically marginalized communities and that includes Asian Americans.

Before I entered public service, I taught at community colleges for 20 years.

I know, of course, that not all students are afforded equal opportunity in our K-12 education systems, and I know that students learn best and graduate more prepared when they encounter diversity in the classroom.

That's why I was so deeply distressed at the Supreme Court's decision to gut affirmative action in higher education.

AANHPI students from low-income, first generation, immigrant refugee or indigenous backgrounds who are already systematically denied equal opportunity in education will encounter even more hurdles to acceptance at higher level education institutions.

That is why there is really no net positive and that's why the Supreme Court's decision does not reflect the belief of many Asian Americans including the majority of AANHPIs who support race-conscious admissions policies.

In fact, nearly 70% of Asian Americans support affirmative action and our communities have indeed historically benefited from affirmative action, as well.

Despite the extremist efforts to turn back time, resegregate our schools, and pit the Asian American community against other communities by using us as a wedge, I refuse, as chair of the Congressional Asian Pacific American Caucus, to let this ruling reverse the tremendous strides communities of color have made to increase equity and opportunity for all.

I stand with the unified civil and human rights community, my colleagues in the Tri-Caucus, Black, Latino, Native American and AANHPI communities across the nation to fight for the right of every student to reach their full potential.

Alongside our Tri-Caucus partners, CAPAC will persist in securing federal funding and support for minority-serving institutions, including AANAPISIs.

We will push for rigorous oversight of federal agencies that combat discrimination in education.

We will demand that higher education institutions and their administrators take immediate steps to do robust outreach to communities of color and underserved communities to ensure diversity remains central to these institution's missions.

And, we will continue telling our youth, never stop pursuing your dreams and keep sharing the full stories of who you are.

Thank you.

- And now, let's go to the panel of litigators.

We welcome Jin Hee.

- Thank you so much and thank you to the Ethnic Media Service for convening this briefing.

It's very important to have this space to talk to the ethnic media about this very important decision.

So, from the trial level through the court of appeals all the way to the United States Supreme Court, the Legal Defense Fund has been representing 25 student and alumni organizations at Harvard and they represent all of the major student and alumni organizations representing Black, Latino, AAPI and indigenous students as well as white students.

And so, our clients are very much directly impacted by the Supreme Court's decision especially in the Harvard case.

The Legal Defense Fund also filed an amicus brief in the University of North Carolina case on behalf of the Legal Defense Fund and the NAACP because there was so much discussion about the relevance of the Brown versus Board of Education decision and the affirmative action issue.

And, of course, the Legal Defense Fund were the lawyers who litigated Brown versus Board of Education and felt that we had a specific expertise on this issue.

So, I would like to begin by saying that this is a devastating opinion.

It was extremely disappointing to see the United States Supreme Court turn their back on 45 years of precedent.

This is precedent that has been very stable for almost five decades.

Although the Supreme Court did not directly overrule its prior decisions, its decision in this case has made it extremely difficult for colleges and universities to be able to consider race as part of its holistic admissions process in order to foster the educational benefits of diversity.

This is something that-- it is a tremendous disappointment.

It is a blow to efforts to advance equal opportunity and racial equality in our educational system, which suffers from tremendous, tremendous dysfunction and inequalities.

And so, we are extremely disappointed by this decision, but we also want to be very careful to not overstate what the United States Supreme Court did in these cases.

These cases dealt solely with the affirmative action policies in higher education at Harvard and UNC.

It did not deal with race-neutral programs either in the higher education space or the PK-through-12 education space.

And, it certainly did not have anything to do with employment programs, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility programs.

Some of these things have been commented on in other media outlets.

But, I want to be very clear that this decision did not directly impact those other areas.

Another very important part of the Supreme Court decision is that the chief justice, Chief Justice Roberts, made very clear that students of color may be able to talk about their experiences with race, overcoming racism perhaps their pride and their racial identity in their college and university application but they have to tie that experience with reasons why they think that they can contribute to the university.

So, his qualification is that colleges and universities cannot consider an applicant's race solely because of their race but instead it must be connected to some experience or some attribute, or some reason as to why that experience with race would contribute to the college and university.

I also just want to say that our clients were tremendously disappointed by this decision.

Many were at the Supreme Court on the day the decision came.

There was also some activism at Harvard, in Boston and Cambridge denouncing the Supreme Court decision.

As Congresswoman Chu had said, our clients represent all racial and ethnic backgrounds at Harvard and all of them are united in support of race-conscious admissions or the consideration of race because they know the importance of racial diversity in both their educational experiences, but also their own expressions of who they are and what they have experienced.

It's very important to note that our clients are not necessarily in support of Harvard because there is much that Harvard needs to do to improve diversity, equity and inclusion on its campus.

But, the students are very much and alumni are very much in support of Harvard being able to foster the diverse student body that is so essential to that Harvard education.

Now that the race-conscious admissions program has been struck down, there will be pressures on Harvard to continue to make efforts to have a diverse student body within the bounds of the law and we are fully supportive of our clients.

- So next, we welcome Francisca Fajana, director of Racial Justice Strategy of Latina Justice.

- Thank you so much for having me.

My comment and reflections will sort of hold some threads in an amicus brief that we filed before the Supreme Court in this particular case.

Ignoring race will not equalize a society that's racially unequal.

Justice Sotomayor had it right.

She and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in their dissent remind us of our long history of segregating opportunity and the enduring racial disparities that persist.

I will share one statistic.

About 21% of Latinos age 25 and older hold a bachelor's degree compared to 42% of non-Hispanic whites.

That's a 20-point differential.

Ignoring race or professing a superficial commitment to colorblindness will not bridge that gap.

The Court's decision, as Jin Hee pointed out, ignores almost five decades of precedent affirming the value of race-conscious admissions to create pathways of opportunity.

We at LatinoJustice will not back down from our commitment to brace open the doors of opportunity for Latino and other students of color.

For the last 50 years, we have worked tirelessly to break down barriers and support our youth to gain access to college and graduate schools.

We will not be deterred from vindicating the rights of all students to bring their full selves including their racial and ethnic identities to institutions of higher learning.

We know that elite institutions are pathways to positions of power in our society.

The Supreme Court itself is Exhibit A!

Throughout its history, the vast majority of justices have attended a handful of top law schools.

So, make no mistake: the Court's decision is not about merit.

It is not about leveling the playing field.

It is not about fairness, and it is certainly not about racial justice or racial equity.

We will not stand back and allow decades of progress worn by hard work and perseverance to be rolled back.

We'll continue to support our young people in gaining access to elite and other institutions and we will continue to support their success while they are in those institutions.

There's a lot to take umbrage with in the Court's decision.

For one, while the Court recognizes that states mandated segregation in schools, housing, employments, buses, trains, juries and interracial marriage was enshrined in law and enforced, it characterizes the state-sanctioned segregation as a "regrettable norm" and dismisses it as societal discrimination that is now inconsequential to the law.

The Court also puts forth the troubling notion that it is stereotyping to assert that a Black student from an affluent household has less in common with a white student from an affluent household.

In other words, their socioeconomic status is a common denominator that makes them interchangeable.

The Court disregards the reality that it's not about race "or" class, that race "and" class intersect for a lot of people of color, and therefore compound the challenges that they face.

In closing, there is one thing on which Justice Roberts and I, Chief Justice Roberts and I do agree and that is eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it thoroughly, thoroughly.

The chief justice must mean that eliminating all of it also includes and encompasses eliminating all racial disparities.

Thank you for having me.

- Thank you.

Thank you so much, Francisca Fajana for LatinoJustice.

Okay.

Now, we go on to John C. Yang, president/executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC.

Hello, Mr. Yang!

- Good afternoon, and thank you for having us again to talk about this important topic.

I'm John Yang, the president and executive director of Asian Americans Advancing Justice, AAJC.

First, let me thank my fellow panelists, Jin Hee, Francisca, Chavis.

We've just worked so hard together and worked so well in collaboration that although obviously the result was extremely disappointing to us, it is not lost on all of us that the work we do will continue.

And, that is certainly a through line that you will hear from all of us, that this is not the end of the fight.

Rather, this is a very pivotal moment in the fight for all of us.

I will keep my remarks short and really engage in the discussion to follow.

Certainly, we were likewise very deeply disappointed by the Supreme Court decision.

To be clear, as you have heard me say before, Asian Americans by a large majority support affirmative action.

This has been demonstrated repeatedly in polls that we and others have conducted.

So, to the extent that others are blaming Asian Americans or suggesting that Asian Americans were the reason that affirmative action has been dismantled, I would ask you to correct that misinformation because among other things that misinformation creates division within our coalition, creates division within this racial solidarity movement that we have.

That division also has created anti-Asian hate, at times.

We know that discrimination against our Asian American community does exist.

It has existed in the form of blaming us for COVID-19.

It has existed because of the political tensions that we have with the Chinese government.

So, it is a moment for all of us to come together and recognize that there are absolutely disparities in K-through-12 education, in higher education that we need to address together.

A couple of last thoughts for this audience.

First is this notion that Justice Roberts has put forward before.

This notion that we should be race blind.

It seems to me that he is asking for race blindness yet he is being blind to the effects of racism and that is something that we need to very directly call him out on and call out others who recognize that racism exists and yet refuse to address it.

The other analogy that I would make is the fact that he recognizes and many recognize that racism is a disease that is still troubling our country.

Yet, he is refusing the very treatment that has helped at least in part, admittedly imperfectly, to at least address some of the symptoms and help make us a more healthy country.

That is what is in front of us, is how do we directly address the maladies that affect us in a way that recognizes that only by directly addressing it will we actually come to a cure.

I really look forward to engaging all of you in a discussion afterwards.

- And now, we welcome our last speaker for the panel, Chavis Jones.

Mr. Jones, please go ahead.

- Yes, thank you so much for having me.

And, my name is Chavis Jones.

I serve as associate counsel at the Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights.

And, I would like to echo many of the sentiments of my extraordinary colleagues and begin by saying that we were deeply disappointed by much of what we read in the 237 pages of words in SCOTUS' decision in these cases.

But, while we were disappointed with many of those words those decisions and their supporters will not have the last word, but we will continue to work to ensure that these campuses are diverse as best possible.

The Lawyers Committee for Civil Rights represents a diverse group from the University of North Carolina as well as Harvard University's students and alumni in the fight to defend the university's right to consider race as one of many factors in admissions.

Our own David Hinojosa, the director of the Educational Opportunities Project, argued before the Court on October 31st to ensure that the lived experiences of students of color were heard loud and clear.

We were also involved in organizing students, alumni and other stakeholders alongside all of our partner organizations here, both for the rally at SCOTUS on the day of oral arguments and since.

And, that work continues to be ongoing.

The Supreme Court's recent decision has dealt a blow to the current state of affirmative action, but rather than succumbing to fear, now is the time for bold action.

Some institutions will be fearful of reprisals from opponents of affirmative action.

But, this is rather a time to do what institutions of higher learning have always done best and that is, innovate.

We encourage colleges and universities to enlist their best minds to work within the law to advance the most inclusive admissions processes possible.

As the Court explicitly states, students of color can speak to their racialized experiences and the degree to which race has significantly played in their lives and their lived experiences.

And, universities can consider these experiences in their decision making processes.

And, we would like to focus on a few key takeaways as we look towards the future in these decisions.

The first is that the scootus-- the SCOTUS ruling, rather- could undermine equal opportunity, but only if we let it.

The Supreme Court abandoned almost half a century of precedent and progress when it held that Harvard and UNC's admissions policies violated the Equal Protections Clause.

While the tortuous, ill-founded decision does not directly outlaw race-conscious admissions, it makes it far more difficult to enact lawful policies and could further undermine opportunities and fairness in our education system.

But, only if we let it.

And, once again, this points towards the collective genius at universities and institutions of higher education to really think creatively about how to enlist the best minds to create broad-based and diverse campuses that will continue to flourish because of the innovation that will result.

Number two, colleges may continue to pursue diversity through lawful means.

The Supreme Court only held that Harvard and UNC's race-conscious admissions policies violated the Equal Protections Clause, but it did not hold that universities may no longer pursue diversity through other lawful means.

Universities may continue to embed diversity goals in their missions, and may aim to achieve such through permissible race-conscious and race-neutral means.

Number three, DEIA efforts remain lawful and more critical than ever.

The Supreme Court decision begins and ends with college admissions practices.

The Court's ruling did not consider diversity, equity, inclusion initiatives like support for student affinity groups.

Efforts that facilitate healthy campus culture ensure equal opportunity, and stop or inhibit ongoing racial discrimination and bias.

These programs remain lawful.

As Justice Jackson said, "Deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life."

Number four, student stories are not censored by SCOTUS.

Speaking and writing about one's own experiences and identity, whether in admissions applications or in the public square is lawful and a matter of self-determination.

Colleges should not prevent students from uplifting their racialized experiences nor does it prevent colleges and universities from inquiring about such experiences in the admissions process.

And, lastly, SCOTUS cannot overrule our shared values.

Opportunity for all remains a national imperative.

If we allow it, the diluting of affirmative action threatens to undermine America's basic tenets and most cherished ideal: our multiracial democracy.

More than ever, we must work together to fight for a country that fully embraces diversity, does not turn its back on diversity, and turn back the clock on decades of progress and ensures equal opportunity for all students to craft the futures they deserve.

Thank you.

- Thank you.

We are closing, but Sunita has a very important question.

- I wanted to ask.

Is there data on how well affirmative action students do once they're admitted?

And, do we need to move the conversation beyond merely admission to support and retention levels once a student is admitted to a university?

- I think it's difficult to have data on students who benefited from affirmative action because, again, affirmative action is not a quota.

So, it's not as if a certain percentage of students are admitted because of their race.

They're looked at in a holistic way.

It's one of many, many considerations.

So, it's difficult to have quantifiable data that says, you know, here are the students who benefited from affirmative action.

That being said, I think there have been many studies showing that standardized tests, for example, are not necessarily an accurate indicator of people's success in college or in their careers, for example.

And so, again, going back to the whole question of merit and what are the-- kind of the "indicators" of merit that colleges, universities look at and are they really indicators that will predict people's success?

Or, are they indicators that we just have relied on for many years without really, without the sufficient basis and resulting in a lot of inequalities in terms of access to educational opportunities.

- Yeah.

I'm not aware of any specific data on the question that you asked, Sunita.

But, there are articles that have sort of discussed the benefits to folks who self-identify as having benefited from affirmative action, right?

So, one of the Supreme Court justices, you know, is somebody who sort of talks about the fact that he benefited from affirmative action but now is very anti-affirmative action!

- Mr. John Yang?

John, any final thoughts?

- There are so many areas where we need to continue to have these discussions about race, to have these discussions explicitly even when it's hard, [background music] even when it's complicated.

When we believe that the fight is lost, when we believe that the Supreme Court has had its final say, that's when we retain that status quo that Henrietta talked about, which is for some, what people are trying to do.

Number two is especially for the younger generation: to believe that their own demography [stammers] demography is their destiny.

We are becoming a more multicultural society.

We need to continue to embrace that, not shy away from that.

Again, including all those hard conversations that, that will bring.

- Thank you to all of you and to our reporters who came up with such great questions and we appreciated your presence here in this very vigorous discussion.

Have a good weekend, everyone!

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