NY Times Op-Ed: The MAGA Culture War Comes For Georgetown Law School

Following up on my previous posts:

Georgetown Dean Pushes Back Against U.S. Attorney's Threat To Refuse To Hire Students From Law Schools With ‘DEI’ (Mar. 7, 2025)
Legal Experts Agree: Georgetown Law Dean Gave Master Class On How To Fight Trump’s Anti-DEI Crusade (Mar. 8, 2025)

New York Times Op-Ed: The MAGA Culture War Comes for Georgetown Law, by David French:

This might sound like a funny thing to say, but I’ve rarely read a more unconstitutional letter.

On Monday, Ed Martin, the interim U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, sent the dean of Georgetown University Law Center, a Catholic law school, a letter that said, “It has come to my attention reliably that Georgetown Law School continues to teach and promote D.E.I. This is unacceptable.”

Martin said that he’d begun an “inquiry” into the school and demanded to know whether it had eliminated all D.E.I. — which he does not define, but in right-wing circles tends to refer to any action at all designed to increase diversity or honor historically marginalized people — from the school and its curriculum. He also asked, “If D.E.I. is found in your courses or teaching in any way, will you move swiftly to remove it?”

This short letter, which was addressed to William Treanor, the dean of the law school, continued with the declaration that “no applicant for our fellows program, our summer internship or employment in our office who is a student or affiliated with a law school or university that continues to teach and utilize D.E.I. will be considered.”

Even a first-year law student knows that the federal government cannot dictate the viewpoint and curriculum of a private Christian school, yet here was a federal prosecutor opening an inquiry into a Jesuit school’s protected speech.

On Thursday, Donald Trump issued an executive order that may well have been even worse. He targeted Perkins Coie — a leading law firm with prominent liberal and Democratic clients — with comprehensive sanctions, in large part because it had engaged in legal work that Trump did not like.

“Notably, in 2016 while representing failed presidential candidate Hillary Clinton,” the order says, “Perkins Coie hired Fusion GPS, which then manufactured a false ‘dossier’ designed to steal an election. This egregious activity is part of a pattern. Perkins Coie has worked with activist donors including George Soros to judicially overturn popular, necessary and democratically enacted election laws, including those requiring voter identification.”

The order strips security clearances from Perkins Coie lawyers (an action that would inhibit their ability to represent clients engaged in serious disputes involving the government) “pending a review of whether such clearances are consistent with the national interest.” It also limits Perkins Coie employees’ access to federal buildings, and it blocks the federal government from hiring Perkins Coie employees.

Trump’s order was his second major attack on a private law firm. Last month he suspended the security clearances of attorneys at Covington & Burling, a large multinational law firm, who provided pro bono legal services to Jack Smith, the special counsel who filed criminal charges against Trump for his efforts to overturn the 2020 election and for his removing classified documents from the White House and obstructing efforts to retrieve them from his home.

The constitutional problem in each case is the same: The Trump administration is targeting the president’s perceived political opponents for investigation and punishment. …

Political and religious speech are the beating heart of the First Amendment. Protections for political speech even predate the founding of the United States. The English Bill of Rights of 1689 protected the right of British subjects to petition the king and protected free speech in Parliament.

There is a reason the founders enshrined these values first. It’s why viewpoint discrimination is the most disfavored form of government censorship. …

Plaintiffs who can prove that they were targeted because of their political or religious perspective almost always win their case. And make no mistake: Attacks on Georgetown Law based on its alleged advocacy of or instruction in D.E.I. and punishment for Perkins Coie and Covington & Burling attorneys for their work with Democrats or Jack Smith are textbook cases of viewpoint discrimination.

One of the most frustrating elements of our post-election national conversation was the insistence in some quarters that the election represented a repudiation of censorship and cancel culture. It did not. …

If Americans don’t have to salute the flag during a war for the survival of Western civilization, then they certainly don’t have to genuflect to Trump or Trumpism as a condition for exercising their unalienable rights.

Or put another way: If our liberties can survive a world war, then they can and should survive a culture war.

Raw Story, 'Oh My God!' MSNBC Hosts Rip Into Trump Appointee Threatening Christian College:

MSNBC's Morning Joe hosts were gobsmacked over an opinion piece in The New York Times about a top Trump administration prosecutor threatening Georgetown University Law School over its alleged continued use of Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) in its curriculum.