Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded an Obama-era guidance Tuesday that had been designed to increase diversity on college campuses by encouraging administrators to consider the use of race in admissions.
Guidance documents, issued by the Justice and Education departments of the Obama administration in 2011 and 2016, had been presented in the form of legal recommendations on the use of race to determine admissions. The Department of Justice announced Tuesday afternoon that Sessions would continue to repeal such guidances that appeared to create new rules outside the formal regulatory process.
“When issuing regulations, federal agencies must abide by constitutional principles and follow the rules set forth by Congress and the president,” Sessions said, according to the release. “In previous administrations, however, agencies often tried to impose new rules on the American people without any public notice or comment period, simply by sending a letter or posting a guidance document on a website. That’s wrong, and it’s not good government.”
The policy change is consistent with a decision Attorney General Jeff Sessions made last November to “prohibit … the Department of Justice from issuing guidance documents that have the effect of adopting new regulatory requirements or amending the law,” according to a memo.
The change also comes in the midst of an ongoing federal lawsuit against Harvard University, which has received a lot of media attention. The lawsuit began in 2014 when a group called Students for Fair Admissions alleged the school discriminates against Asian-Americans in order to promote racial diversity on campus. The lawsuit is scheduled to go to trial in October.
