Latest news with #CivilRightsDivision
Fox News
a day ago
- Politics
- Fox News
Justice Department investigating University of California over alleged DEI-based hiring
The Justice Department has announced it is investigating the University of California (UC) for alleged Title VII discrimination violations in its hiring practices. The agency announced Thursday that its Civil Rights Division is looking into the university's individual campuses regarding potential race- and sex-based discrimination in employment practices. The university's "UC 2030 Capacity Plan" directs its campuses to hire "diverse" faculty members to meet race- and sex-based employment quotas, the Justice Department said. "These initiatives openly measure new hires by their race and sex, which potentially runs afoul of federal law," the Justice Department said in a press release. "The Civil Rights Division's Employment Litigation Section will investigate whether the University of California is engaged in a pattern or practice of discrimination based on race, sex, and other protected characteristics, pursuant to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964." Title VII prohibits an employer from discriminating against an individual on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin, Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division, said. "Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination," Dhillon said. "Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law." The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division wrote to the university on Thursday, informing it of the investigation. "Our investigation is based on information suggesting that the University of California may be engaged in certain employment practices that discriminate against employees, job applicants, and training program participants based on race and sex in violation of Title VII," the letter reads. "Specifically, we have reason to believe the University of California's 'UC 2030 Capacity Plan' precipitated unlawful action by the University of California and some or all its constituent campuses." UC said it will work in good faith with the Justice Department as it conducts its investigation. "The University of California is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws," a UC statement provided to Fox News Digital reads. "The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported." The university's UC 2030 Capacity Plan lays out a goal of becoming a national model as a Hispanic-Serving Institution (HSI) and Minority-Serving Institution (MSI) system. The plan outlines a pipeline strategy to diversify faculty and researchers through expanded graduate enrollment and outreach to institutions that serve underrepresented students. The DOJ, however, claims these initiatives may violate Title VII by functioning as de facto employment quotas. In March, UC dropped diversity statements from its hiring practices amid President Donald Trump's threats that schools could lose federal funding. The university's provost, Katherine S. Newman, sent out a letter to the system's leaders informing them that diversity statements are no longer required for new applicants. Newman wrote that while some programs and departments have required them, the university has never had a policy of diversity statements and believes it could harm applicant evaluation. "The requirement to submit a diversity statement may lead applicants to focus on an aspect of their candidacy that is outside their expertise or prior experience," the letter obtained by Fox News Digital reads. She added that employees and applicants can still reference accomplishments related to diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) on their own, but requiring stand-alone diversity statements is no longer permitted.
Los Angeles Times
a day ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Justice Department rejects Orange County proposal to avoid lawsuit over sensitive voter information
The Justice Department Wednesday sued the Orange County Registrar of Voters to access records on the office's efforts to remove ineligible voters and accusing the county of failing to maintain an accurate voter list. Orange County Registrar of Voters Bob Page told City News Service, 'I can't comment on pending or ongoing litigation.' Orange County Board of Supervisors Vice Chairwoman Katrina Foley said the registrar was complying with state law in not turning over some of the information and added the county has been doing its job to eliminate bogus voters. 'We're complying with state law that says we are required to protect the privacy of what would be considered private information,' Foley told City News Service. That would include Social Security numbers and driver's license numbers, Foley said. 'And in five years we have identified 17 ineligible voters —16 of whom have self-reported,' Foley said. Robert Soufar, a 76-year-old Canadian citizen who lives in Fullerton, pleaded guilty in November to voting in the 2016 election. 'All of these 17 individuals have been removed from the voter rolls,' Foley said.'There are 1.9 million registered voters and 17 people have been identified as ineligible. Our voting lists are scrubbed constantly for people who have moved or died... This is a good example that the system worked.' Michael Gates, a deputy assistant attorney general in the Civil Rights Division, is listed on the complaint. Gates was formerly city attorney for Huntington Beach, which legally squabbled often with the state, including on voter ID. 'It feels political,' Foley said. 'I don't know why the Department of Justice is getting involved when we took care of the situation. We're actually canceling their registrations and doing our job.' Supervisor Don Wagner, however, said the county should just hand over whatever the federal officials want. 'I think we ought to give everything over to the Department of Justice like they request and we shouldn't be trying to hide anything if we have nothing to hide,' Wagner told City News Service. Any voter who objects can bring their own lawsuit, Wagner said. 'I want the cleanest rolls possible,' Wagner said. Wagner said it doesn't matter if state law prevents turning over some personal information. 'If the federal government has a right to it, state law doesn't trump that,' Wagner said. 'I know it is a small number, but that's part of my problem. I don't know if it's the tip of the iceberg or we have the entire iceberg here. And I think the Justice Department wants to figure that out and we should help them figure it out and not stand in the way.' Assistant Atty. Gen. Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division said in a statement that 'Voting by non- citizens is a federal crime, and states and counties that refuse to disclose all requested voter information are in violation of well-established federal elections laws. Removal of non-citizens from the state's voter rolls is critical to ensuring that the state's voter rolls are accurate and that elections in California are conducted without fraudulent voting. The Department of Justice will hold jurisdictions that refuse to comply with federal voting laws accountable.' At issue is the Registrar of Voters redacting information such as drivers license, Social Security and voter ID numbers. James Steinmann, a supervising deputy counsel for the county, asked Justice Department officials if it was possible to work around the state law regarding disclosure of the private information on Tuesday. 'To avoid a lawsuit, would the USDOJ consider another mechanism to enable the county to provide the USDOJ with this sensitive information,' Steinmann said in an email. 'For example, would the USDOJ be amenable to entering into a confidentiality agreement that would enable us to provide records with assurances that such sensitive personal identifiers will remain confidential and be used for governmental purposes only' But the Justice Department responded with Wednesday's lawsuit.
Al Jazeera
2 days ago
- Politics
- Al Jazeera
Trump administration launches probe into University of California system
The administration of United States President Donald Trump has announced an investigation into hiring practices at the University of California (UC) system, the latest instance of his feud with higher education. The Department of Justice said on Thursday that it would investigate efforts by the UC system to increase the diversity of staff, accusing the school of employing practices that 'openly measure new hires by their race and sex'. The Trump administration has previously depicted diversity initiatives as a form of discrimination. 'Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,' Harmeet Dhillion, the head of the Civil Rights Division, said in a statement. 'Institutional directives that use race- and sex-based hiring practices expose employers to legal risk under federal law.' In a letter of notice to the University of California, the Justice Department noted that it had 'reason to believe' unlawful actions occurred on some of the school's campuses. But it added that it had not 'reached any conclusions about the subject matter of the investigation'. The University of California system is one of the most prominent public university systems in the US, with 10 campuses and more than 299,000 enrolled students. The school defended its hiring practices on Thursday in response to the investigation announcement. 'The University of California is committed to fair and lawful processes in all of our programs and activities, consistent with federal and state anti-discrimination laws,' a spokesperson for the UC system said in a statement. 'The University also aims to foster a campus environment where everyone is welcomed and supported.' President Trump has yet to weigh in on the investigation, but his administration has repeatedly clashed with US universities during his second term in the White House. Prestigious universities, such as Harvard and Columbia, have had federal grants and contracts cancelled over allegations that they have not done enough to crack down on campus protests against Israel's war in Gaza. The Trump administration said those protests were anti-Semitic and created an unsafe environment for Jews on college campuses. Trump and his allies have also portrayed universities as hotbeds of left-wing ideas and political dissent. In the case of Harvard University, the Trump administration sent a letter on April 11 with a list of demands for changes. One required Harvard to submit to an external audit of its enrollment and staff, to evaluate 'viewpoint diversity' with the aim of implementing 'reforms' to its admissions and hiring practices. The external party, the letter noted, would have to 'satisfy the federal government'. Harvard has resisted those demands, citing the need to protect academic freedom. The Trump administration has since threatened its tax-exempt status and sought to restrict its ability to enrol foreign students. In response, Harvard has filed lawsuits to restore its federal funding and block the Trump administration's attempts to bar foreign students. On Thursday, the school also unveiled an agreement with the University of Toronto that would allow foreign students to continue their Harvard studies in Canada if Trump's visa restrictions affected their ability to attend classes. Critics have described Trump's actions as an effort to pressure schools into greater conformity with the political views and priorities of the White House. One particular flashpoint for the Trump administration has been efforts to promote diversity in university hiring and enrolment. Proponents say those initiatives help counter the legacy of discrimination in higher education, but the Trump administration has said they are a form of discrimination themselves. In a news conference on Thursday, White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt did not weigh in on the specifics of the UC investigation, but reaffirmed Trump's commitment to dismantling diversity initiatives. 'It's the position of this president that we want to restore a merit-based society and culture in the United States of America where people are not hired, nor are they promoted, based on the colour of their skin or their gender,' she said. On the first day of his second term, Trump signed an executive order ending 'diversity, equity and inclusion' (DEI) programming in the federal government. He called those programmes a source of 'immense public waste and shameful discrimination'. But critics have argued that Trump's efforts have served as their own form of discrimination, violating the constitutional rights of those he disagrees with. The government, for instance, has sought to deport several foreign students who took part in pro-Palestine activities on college campuses, raising free speech questions. They include a Turkish graduate student named Rumeysa Ozturk, who was arrested by immigration agents for co-authoring an article in the school newspaper calling for an end to the war in Gaza.
Deccan Herald
2 days ago
- Politics
- Deccan Herald
US Justice Dept to probe hiring practices at University of California
The Justice Department's Civil Rights Division alleged that the university system openly measures new hires by their race and sex. The probe will investigate whether its practices represent a pattern or practice of discrimination under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which bars employment discrimination.
Los Angeles Times
2 days ago
- Politics
- Los Angeles Times
Justice Department sues Orange County registrar for access to noncitizen voting records
Federal authorities sued Orange County's top elections official Wednesday, alleging the county registrar violated federal law by refusing to disclose detailed information about people who were removed from the voter rolls because they were not citizens. The lawsuit, filed in federal court, alleges that Orange County Registrar Bob Page is 'concealing the unlawful registration of ineligible, non-citizen voters' by withholding sensitive personal information such as Social Security and driver's license numbers. The 10-page lawsuit does not allege that any noncitizens voted in Orange County. 'Voting by noncitizens is a federal crime,' said Harmeet Dhillon, the assistant attorney general for the Justice Department's Civil Rights Division. 'States and counties that refuse to disclose all requested voter information are in violation of well-established federal elections laws.' The lawsuit stems from a June 2 letter from the Justice Department to Orange County election officials, seeking information on people who had been removed from the county's voter rolls because they weren't eligible to vote. According to the lawsuit, federal officials were acting on a complaint made by the relative of a noncitizen who received a mail ballot. Over a five-year period, Orange County identified 17 noncitizens who had registered to vote, Page told the federal agency in a June 16 letter, sent in response to the June 2 request. Those people either 'self-reported' that they were not citizens or were deemed ineligible by the Orange County district attorney's office, Page said. The registrar sent the names, dates of birth and addresses of those 17 people to federal officials, but redacted some sensitive information, including Social Security numbers, driver's license numbers, voter identification numbers and scans of their signatures, according to a letter from the county's lawyers. County lawyers argued that withholding more sensitive personal information struck a balance between federal disclosure laws and state laws that limit how election officials can share private information. Leon Page, the county counsel for Orange County, who is not related to Bob Page, said in an email that federal officials hadn't produced a subpoena or identified a 'substantive legal authority' for why the registrar's office should disclose sensitive personal information protected by state law. County lawyers also offered to draft a 'confidentiality agreement that would limit disclosure to a governmental purpose,' he said, but the Justice Department didn't respond to the offer. 'Instead, the USDOJ filed a lawsuit,' Leon Page said. He said the county hopes to resolve the complaint through a protective order in court. Such an order could put guardrails around how the Justice Department could use or share the information about noncitizens who registered to vote. Justin Levitt, an election law expert at Loyola Marymount University's law school and a former voting rights lawyer in the Justice Department, said the lawsuit was 'a little weird,' in part because government agencies frequently negotiate over sharing information and rarely go to court to do so. The Justice Department should be able to verify whether Orange County has a process of ensuring that ineligible people are kept off the voter rolls by seeing the full names, addresses and birthdays of those who were removed, he said. A Social Security number or driver's license number should not be necessary, he said, raising questions about how the Justice Department plans to use the information it requested. Federal law requires election officials to maintain voter information for 22 months after an election, Levitt said. Many officials keep those records for longer, but there is no law requiring them to do so. He said he didn't know 'what right the feds have' to request voter information going back to 2020. 'This is a pretty small dispute with pretty small stakes, over a pretty small number of records,' Levitt said. 'But it is another dot in what is becoming a series of rather disturbing dots of this administration's data practices.' Orange County Supervisor Don Wagner, one of two Republicans on the five-member board, said in a prepared statement that 'placing roadblocks and refusing to comply' had 'unfortunately and unnecessarily forced the hand of the Department of Justice.' 'We invited this lawsuit,' Wagner said. 'The county's only interest is in having the cleanest possible voter rolls so that every eligible voter may vote, but only eligible voters may vote.' Supervisor Katrina Foley, a Democrat, defended the county's decision to redact some information, saying that the county 'takes very seriously our duty to protect the private personal information of the people who register to vote in our county.' 'Voter privacy is built into the system and state law prohibits the county from providing private information without a court order,' Foley said. If the Justice Department had secured a court order, Foley said, then the county would provide the requested information. Californians are required to verify their identities when they register to vote, and that information is cross-referenced with Department of Motor Vehicle files. The state also imposes penalties for fraudulent registration. In a Reddit Q&A with the Orange County Register last year, Bob Page said that state law bars the registrar's office from verifying someone's citizenship when they register to vote, beyond the verification done by the state. He said his office makes daily updates to voter registration files and averaged about 60,000 changes each month. His office would contact the Orange County district attorney or California secretary of state if it is provided evidence of someone illegally registering to vote, the registrar said. An Orange County spokesperson said that of the 17 people who were registered to vote and were not eligible over a five-year period, 16 self-reported that they were not citizens. The district attorney's office found that one person had registered to vote despite not being a citizen. That person, a Canadian citizen and legal resident, pleaded guilty in 2024 to three misdemeanor counts of casting votes in the primary and general 2016 elections. He was sentenced to one year of informal probation. Bob Page did not return messages seeking comment about the suit. A spokesperson for the registrar's office said the county does not comment on pending or ongoing litigation. Last year, voters in Santa Ana rejected a measure that would have allowed noncitizens to vote in local races. The measure would have allowed residents of the city, even if they are not citizens, to cast ballots in local measures, but they would still be ineligible to vote in federal and state elections. San Francisco has allowed the parents of schoolchildren to vote in school board races, even if they are not citizens. Voters in Oakland approved a similar measure in 2022 but has not implemented it yet. Some cities in Maryland and Vermont have also moved to allowing noncitizens to vote in local elections, but the measures have met with legal challenges. A New York City law that would have allowed noncitizens to vote was struck down in March by the state's top court, finding it violated the state's constitution.
