Four former clerks to U.S. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas have joined to challenge Harvard’s admission policy as racially discriminatory.
Adam Mortara and John Hughes, both partners at Bartlit Beck Herman Palenchar & Scott, joined William Consovoy and Patrick Strawbridge, partners at Consovoy McCarthy Park, according to the National Law Journal. The case is set to begin Oct. 15. All formerly clerked for Thomas, a known opponent of affirmative action, which is he has compared to Jim Crow segregation laws.
The lawsuit, first filed in 2014, claims that Harvard’s policy discriminates against Asian-American students in favor of African-Americans and other applicants.
Mortara clerked for Thomas during a case being cited by the plaintiffs, Gratz v. Bollinger. In that case, the Supreme Court ruled that the University of Michigan was implementing an unconstitutional scoring method for undergraduate admissions, awarding more points to applicants considered underrepresented minorities.
Critics have likened the lawsuit to the 2016 case brought before the Supreme Court by Abigail Fisher, a white applicant who claimed she was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin because of her race. The court ruled 4-3 in favor of the university, deeming it constitutional to use race as one of multiple factors in admissions decisions.
