Stephen Miller is at it again — this time suing New York University, accusing its law school of discriminating against White men in selecting students for membership in its prestigious law review.
“The NYU Law Review continues to give unlawful and discriminatory preferences to women, non-Asian racial minorities, and homosexual and transgender individuals when selecting its members and editors,” the group said a lawsuit filed in October.
Miller is a former Trump advisor who runs the conservative legal group, America First Legal. He threatened in the summer to sue law schools over admissions policies should they run afoul of the recent Supreme Court decision — Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.
“There are those within and outside your institutions who will tell you that you can develop an admissions scheme through pretext or proxy to achieve the same discriminatory outcome,” Miller warned in a letter. “Anyone telling you such a thing is coaching you to engage in illegal conduct in brazen violation of a Supreme Court ruling, lawbreaking in which you would be fully complicit and thus fully liable.”
His lawsuit against NYU is related to the school’s policies used to choose student editors. NYU Law Review’s selection process allegedly focuses on recruiting women and minorities thus violating anti-discrimination laws.
The plaintiff in the case is an anonymous first-year student at NYU Law. He is planning on applying to be on the editorial team for NYU Law Review in Summer 2024. The lawsuit marks the second time the NYU Law Review has been the target of litigation. Conservative lawyer Jonathan Mitchell unsuccessfully sued it and the Harvard Law Review in 2018.
NYU Law Review has also been in the news because students have demanded to be paid. Students created a petition with more than 250 signatures in support of the cause, and eight on-campus publications signed a letter to law school administrators.
In the letter, students asked that all contributors to the journals be able to choose whether to receive compensation in hourly wages or credit hours. Currently, only third-year students are eligible for compensation through credit hours, and no students receive hourly pay.
NYU’s student bar association was also recently in the news when its president, Ryna Workman, published an opinion column that blamed Israel for Hamas’ terrorist attack. The SBA disbanded shortly after the controversy.
