The Department of Justice announced an investigation into the University of California system, saying its policy of valuing diversity in hiring could run against the Civil Rights Act.

On Thursday, the DOJ sent a letter to Dr. Michael Drake, the president of the university. The DOJ said it was investigating whether or not the hiring plan laid out in the UC 2030 Capacity Plan violated Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Title VII is meant to protect potential hires from being denied a job based on protected classes like race, sex or religion.

“Public employers are bound by federal laws that prohibit racial and other employment discrimination,” Assistant Attorney General Harmeet K. Dhillon of the Justice Department’s 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.”

READ MORE: DEI Policies Go Against 1964 Civil Rights Act, DOJ Warns

The 2030 Capacity Plan addresses both enrollment goals and faculty hiring. One of its goals is “reflecting California’s racial/ethnic diversity.”

“Faculty are the backbone to the University of California – they create highly ranked academic programs, develop the curriculum, and produce research that yields important discoveries and scholarly works,” the plan reads. “For UC to remain excellent, it must grow and diversify its faculty. The University is committed to increasing the diversity of its faculty, both underrepresented minorities and female faculty.”

To fulfill this goal, UC says it started the Advancing Faculty Diversity (AFD) program with both state funding and funding that came directly from the UC president’s office.

“AFD identifies best practices in equity opportunity hiring by providing competitive awards to campus pilots testing new interventions aimed at increasing faculty diversity and improving academic climate and faculty retention,” the plan reads.

Though the plan cites diverse hiring as a goal, it does not lay out how exactly this is being accomplished. The only other reference to the program is in the section about UC San Diego specifically, where it says the campus is “actively involved” in AFD, “and has already invested in 28 new [full-time equivalent programs], half in a cohort on STEM impacts on the Black diaspora and half on Latinx/Chicanx experience in Humanities and Social Sciences.”

Though the DOJ alleges the 2030 Capacity Plan “directs its campuses to hire ‘diverse’ faculty members to meet race- and sex-based employment quotas,” the UC website makes no mention of such quotas. UC describes its AFD program as awarding “competitive grants to faculty project leads on all ten campuses in two priority areas: recruitment and improving climate & retention.”

This is just the latest in the Trump DOJ’s fight against “Diversity, Equity and Inclusion” or DEI policies, often using the Civil Rights Act as a cudgel. Though the landmark Act was meant to help qualified women and people of color find work they’d been shut out of before, many right-wing pundits claim it’s resulted in white men being blocked out of jobs.

A number of studies—including three from the National Bureau of Economic Research—show this claim is unfounded, according to The Oregonian. These studies, each published in the last six years, say white people are still more likely to be hired than people of color.

“We thought if we’re going to see [a preference for female or minority candidates] anywhere, we’re going to see it in these prestigious employers who tell us up and down they’re trying to hire for diversity,” Wharton economist Corinne Low told the paper. “We see either no preference, or we actually see a penalty toward female and minority candidates.”

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The U.S. Dept. of Justice under Attorney General Bill Barr has intervened in a pre-emptive lawsuit filed by a Kentucky wedding photographer who claims her interpretation of her Christian religion bars her from taking photos of weddings of same-sex couples.

No same-sex couple has ever tried to hire Chelsey Nelson to photograph their nuptials, but her attorneys, the far right wing Alliance Defending Freedom, filed the lawsuit against Louisville city officials anyway, according to the AP. The ADF appears on the Southern Poverty Law Center list of anti-LGBTQ hate groups.

And now the Justice Dept. in a 23-page “statement of interest” says the “Court should find that Plaintiffs have demonstrated a likelihood of success on the merits.”

In other words, the DOJ has told the court hearing her case directly that it agrees with the ADF.

The Louisville law bans businesses from discriminating against LGBTQ people. Many legal experts agree that refusing to provide a service to an entire class of people is discrimination, hence the countless laws across the country that protect LGBTQ people and other minorities from being refused services their non-LGBTQ peers regularly pay for and receive without question.

The DOJ, however, in a press release claims the legal statement it filed explains that Nelson “is likely to succeed on her claim that requiring her to photograph weddings against her conscience constitutes government-compelled speech that violates the Free Speech Clause of the First Amendment.”

“The First Amendment forbids the government from forcing someone to speak in a manner that violates individual conscience,” said Eric Dreiband, Assistant Attorney General for the Civil Rights Division. “The U.S. Department of Justice will continue to protect the right of all persons to exercise their constitutional right to speech and expression.”

The ACLU disagrees, and “filed a brief defending the city, arguing that the Nelson’s intent to offer wedding photography only to heterosexual couples violates the city law.”

The renowned  civil rights group calls Nelson’s position “identity-based discrimination.”

The SPLC says the Alliance Defending Freedom “has supported the recriminalization of homosexuality in the U.S. and criminalization abroad; has defended state-sanctioned sterilization of trans people abroad; has linked homosexuality to pedophilia and claims that a ‘homosexual agenda’ will destroy Christianity and society.”

The Arizona Supreme Court has just ruled in favor of a calligraphy and wedding invitation company whose owners claim their religion forbids them to sell to same-sex couples. Brush & Nib Studio owners Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski are represented by Alliance Defending Freedom. ADF also wrote their business operating agreement, according to ABC 10, before filing the lawsuit on the couple’s behalf.

The court ruled 4-3 that the City of Phoenix “cannot apply its Human Relations Ordinance … to force Joanna Duka and Breanna Koski … to create custom wedding invitations celebrating same-sex wedding ceremonies in violation of their sincerely held religious beliefs.”

This is a narrow ruling in that the court noted that its decision applies only to wedding invitations.

“We do not recognize a blanket exemption from the Ordinance for all of Plaintiffs’ business operations.”

“Duka and Koski’s beliefs about same-sex marriage may seem old-fashioned, or even offensive to some. But the guarantees of free speech and freedom of religion are not only for those who are deemed sufficiently enlightened, advanced, or progressive. They are for everyone. After all, while our own ideas may be popular today, they may not be tomorrow,” the court added.

At issue is the City of Phoenix’s six-year old anti-discrimination ordinance, which ADF attacked in court.

The lawsuit was first filed in 2016. The Duka and Koski are not suing because they have been accused of discrimination. They are preemptively suing for the “right” to reject lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender customers. The business owners lost a 2017 judgment and appealed in 2018.

The Southern Poverty Law Center includes the Alliance Defending Freedom (ADF) on its list of anti-gay hate groups. SPLC in 2017 reported Brush & Nib is also a vendor on Etsy, and “voluntarily and willingly agreed to the vendor terms of service for the site, which prohibits discrimination based on sexual orientation and gender identity.”

AZ Central notes that the state’s Supreme Court “has been packed by Gov. Doug Ducey with judges to his liking.” Ducey is a Republican.

Like many local non-discrimination ordinances, Phoenix’s bans discrimination “based on race, color, religion, sex, national origin, marital status, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, or disability,” AZ Central adds.

Next month the U.S. Supreme Court will hear arguments in three cases of anti-LGBTQ discrimination. Their ruling will have historic effects.

This is a breaking news and developing story. Details may change. This story will be updated, and NCRM will likely publish follow-up stories on this news. Stay tuned and refresh for updates.