Law.com, Is Edward Blum Done Suing Law Firms?:

Edward Blum, the conservative legal activist who this year helped dismantle affirmative action in college admissions and prompted law firms to open diversity fellowships to all applicants, may not be done suing law firms after all.

After Blum dropped a recent lawsuit against Winston & Strawn, Bloomberg Law reported Blum said he was done suing law firms. Blum meant he was done for now. “If we learn of a law firm that has a policy similar to the ones we sued and they have not changed it, and a plaintiff wants to apply for that position who is disqualified because of their race, we will file a lawsuit against that law firm,” Blum said in a recent interview with The American Lawyer.

Data from NALP, the American Bar Association and the American Lawyer indicate that the legal profession does not reflect American society in terms of who ends up becoming a lawyer, with some races, ethnicities, gender identities and sexual orientations tending to have better luck than others. That systemic prejudices are to blame, and that the profession’s leading law firms ought to break down barriers that enforce them, is a broadly held opinion in Big Law today.

It is not the opinion of Blum, however. He was already instrumental in getting part of the 1965 Voting Rights Act overturned and ended affirmative action in college admissions through eight trips to the U.S. Supreme Court by the time he filed complaints against Perkins Coie and Morrison & Foerster in August. 

The affirmative action case, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, provided what Blum characterized as a new judicial doctrine on the influence of “racial preferences” at law firms and in other arenas such as higher education, public education and voting.

“If that is forbidden in higher education then I think most law firms have recognized that other entities outside of higher education that use racial classifications and preferences to achieve diversity are suspect,” Blum said. “That’s the whole ball of energy behind what has happened with the law firms.” …

Most Big Law firms aren’t walking away from DEI commitments or wholly cutting programs in response to the Blum lawsuits, according to interviews with numerous law firm CDOs and DEI consultants in recent months. But the lasting impact of Blum’s 2023 litigation remains to be seen.

In a July interview with the New York Times, Blum said the SFFA decision left it up to colleges to create “fair and equitable admissions policies that do not discriminate on the basis of race.”

Asked what he thought the impact of his litigation against Big Law firms may be, Blum again emphasized the need for better recruitment. “Maybe we should recruit at Texas Tech, maybe we should recruit at Wyoming State [University of Wyoming] or the University of Maine or the South Texas College of Law,” he said. “Those schools have significantly more minorities, and those kids come from less advantaged economic backgrounds than Harvard or Stanford or Chicago. That would comport with the law.”