Project on (Un)Fair Representation

By Rachel Pomerantz

​Rachel Pomerantz is a freshman at the University of Pennsylvania.

When the Supreme Court protected voting rights in Evenwel v. Abbott, they protected the rights of many at-risk communities. However, the current eight-person bench dealt a blow to one group in particular: the Project on Fair Representation, a small but powerful legal defense fund based out of Texas. They describe themselves as supporting “litigation that challenges racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in state and federal courts.” [1]

However, upon closer analysis, their name and description are not entirely accurate. Their primary goal is to eradicate radical race-based preferences such as provisions of the Voting Rights Act, affirmative action, and congressional districts drawn to ensure minority groups can be heard in the political process. Furthermore, the use of “they/their” as pronouns for this group is also inaccurate; the Project on Fair Representation is made up of one man who has no legal or scholarly education, not to mention a law degree: Edward Blum.

This organization is drastically shaping the course of the American legal system and civil rights, so we should and deserve to learn as much as possible about it.  After unsuccessfully running for Congress twice and championing a mixed bag of court cases challenging “racial preferences” in Houston, Mr. Blum went to Washington and founded the Project on Fair Representation in 2005. [2]

Mr. Blum has used his connections as a former stockbroker, visiting fellow at the right-wing American Enterprise Institute, and utilized a network of conservative donors to build a potent organization that has already seen unprecedented and alarming success at the highest levels of government. Even though donations to a legal defense fund are usually not tax exempt, the Project on Fair Representation is financed by Donors Trust, a tax-exempt charitable group that funds conservative causes. [3]

Pick the most important case threatening civil rights in the past few years. Odds are, Mr. Blum and his organization were funding that case.

Shelby County v. Holder

The Supreme Court decided that the success of the Voting Rights Act’s preclearance requirement for districts with a history of flagrant voter discrimination was its own downfall and rendered Section 5 (the preclearance requirement) void by ruling that the section describing the coverage formula for preclearance is unconstitutional. To understand the effects of this effort, just look to North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, or Mississippi. All of these states were subject to some degree of preclearance and now have free license to practice voter suppression with the full knowledge that the remaining sections of the Voting Rights Act are less effective in combating discriminatory voting laws. [4]

Fisher v. University of Texas

The University of Texas uses a “10 percent plan” for most of its admissions decisions by automatically admitting the top 10 percent of any Texas public school which, by the segregated nature of Texas schools, increases diversity. For the remaining 25% of in-state students, they employ a “holistic” system that, after a Supreme Court ruling in 2003, includes race. Abigail Fisher graduated in the top 12% of her class, but then was not admitted under the holistic program and sued because she was judged based on her race (Caucasian). The Supreme Court upheld allowing race in the holistic process by sending it back to the lower courts, and the case again made its way back to the Supreme Court last December. [5]

Evenwel v. Abbott

The Court considered whether or not states could create legislative districts based on equal total populations in each district or based on equal numbers of voters in each district. If the latter became the new system for determining legislative districts, it would dramatically dilute the power of areas with significant portions of nonvoters, including illegal immigrants and children. In order to prevent a 4-4 split, the court only ruled that states could decide for themselves and were not obligated to apportion equal voters to each district, allowing Texas to continue to use the total population metric. [6]

Mr. Blum did not have locus standi (legal standing derived from being harmed by a law or having automatic standing under the law) to challenge the law in any of the aforementioned cases. He does not live in Shelby County, Alabama or in a legislative district in Texas in question and is not applying to UT-Austin any time soon.

The Project on Fair Representation does not employ any in-house lawyers and instead seeks out plaintiffs to bring suit and then matches them with high-power attorneys. Mr. Blum likes to compare the work his organization does to that of the NAACP legal defense fund and the marriage equality push by LGBT activists.

The framework is similar enough, but the cases are different. The NAACP forged a legal path behind the work of civil rights activists that were beaten, jailed, and killed fighting for their rights to sit at the front of the bus and stand in line to vote for politicians who would not blatantly ignore their rights to be full, equal, and not separate citizens of the American experiment.

But it would be naive to believe that the noble work of the NAACP, LGBT community, or women’s rights movements are even close to over. Hundreds of years of legal and societal oppression does not disappear overnight. Racial inequalities in education still exist. Access to the ballot box is not equal. The color of your skin still has an unjust impact on the quality of the American experience. Affirmative steps are needed to begin addressing these wrongs. And Mr. Blum’s network of conservatives, with the Project on Fair Representation at its nexus, are at the forefront of assailing these efforts.

Now, important issues deserve thoughtful debate, and people have the right to access the legal system regardless of their viewpoints. I am not saying and I think it would be a  dangerous precedent to say that Mr. Blum should not be exercising his right to express his views, but it would be a disgrace to elevate his work to that of the NAACP. [7] [8]


[1] "Project on Fair Representation." Project on Fair Representation Project on Fair Representation Comments. Accessed April 07, 2016. https://www.projectonfairrepresentation.org/.
[2] Smith, Morgan. "One Man Standing Against Race-Based Laws." The New York Times. February 23, 2012. Accessed April 07, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/edward-blum-and-the-project-on-fair-representation-head-to-the-supreme-court-to-fight-race-based-laws.html?_r=0.
[3] Biskupic, Joan. "Special Report: Behind U.S. Race Cases, a Little-known Recruiter." Reuters. December 04, 2012. Accessed April 06, 2016. http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-court-casemaker-idUSBRE8B30V220121204.
[4] Lopez, Tomas. "'Shelby County': One Year Later | Brennan Center for Justice." 'Shelby County': One Year Later | Brennan Center for Justice. June 24, 2014. Accessed April 07, 2016. http://www.brennancenter.org/analysis/shelby-county-one-year-later.
[5] Epps, Garrett. "Is Affirmative Action Finished?" The Atlantic. December 10, 2015. Accessed April 05, 2016. http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/when-can-race-be-a-college-admissions-factor/419808/.   
[6] Denniston, Lyle. "Opinion Analysis: Leaving a Constitutional Ideal Still Undefined." SCOTUSblog. April 04, 2016. Accessed April 05, 2016. http://www.scotusblog.com/2016/04/opinion-analysis-leaving-a-constitutional-ideal-still-undefined/.
[7] Smith, Morgan. "One Man Standing Against Race-Based Laws." The New York Times. February 23, 2012. Accessed April 07, 2016. http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/24/us/edward-blum-and-the-project-on-fair-representation-head-to-the-supreme-court-to-fight-race-based-laws.html?_r=0.
[8] Joffe-Walt, Chana. "What's A Yenta?" NPR. June 13, 2012. Accessed April 06, 2016. http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2012/06/14/154955498/whats-a-yenta.
Photo Credit: Flickr User John Nakamura Remy

 


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