The Justice Department is invoking a landmark civil rights law as it walks back a lawsuit seeking to dismantle a state’s affirmative action hiring policy.
In a memorandum filed on Tuesday, the DOJ asked a three-judge panel for leave to amend its complaint in a lawsuit it first brought against the state on January 14.
The suit accuses Minnesota of maintaining a “race- and sex-based affirmative action policy” for its state civil service that amounts to a “pattern or practice” violating Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the very statute written to bar discrimination in employment.
The Civil Rights Division, led by Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon, says its rewritten complaint would sharpen the case into a purely “facial challenge” and seek only forward-looking relief. The rewritten complaint would instead seek a “declaratory judgment that Minnesota’s affirmative action policy violates Title VII” and a “permanent injunction” barring the state from enforcing it, the DOJ wrote.
DOJ lawyers cast the revision as an effort to streamline the fight and pointed to the court’s instruction that the parties “work cooperatively throughout this litigation to narrow the issues in dispute.”
The DOJ insisted it had a “legitimate, good faith reason for bringing this Title VII lawsuit” and that it “in no way singled Minnesota out for enforcement action.” The proposed complaint “lists various other active investigations to demonstrate that the United States is not selectively enforcing Title VII against Minnesota,” the DOJ added.
The new court filing complains that Minnesota’s affirmative action rules “remained in effect following the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s rescission of its affirmative action guidance,” referring to guidance the government withdrew.
The DOJ argued that the rewrite should cost the state nothing and told the court that its amended complaint is “likely to narrow (if not eliminate) the need for discovery” as the “case remains in its infancy.”
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