Fifth Circuit Affirms Dismissal Of ‘Anti-Woke’ Hiring Bias Suit

On Oct. 30, the Fifth Circuit upheld a district court’s dismissal of a class action filed by University of Texas professor Richard Lowery. In the lawsuit, Lowery alleged Texas A&M and its officers, “egged on by woke ideologues,” engaged in pervasive hiring discrimination against white and Asian men. More particularly, Lowery claimed that A&M, “along with nearly every university in the United States, discriminates on account of race and sex when hiring its faculty [by] giving discriminatory preferences to females and non-Asian” minorities. Both the district court and the court of appeals held Lowery — who never actually applied for a position at A&M — lacked standing to bring the case.For some time, the intersection of race, universities and the law has been a hot-button topic. Just last year, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark decision in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. There, the nation’s high court held the use of race as a decisive factor in admissions violated the equal protection clause. Thereafter, the Texas legislature passed legislation that, among other things, banned public universities from forming or maintaining diversity, equity and inclusion offices and prohibited racial preferences in hiring. Accordingly,…