A civil rights group claims Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey is trying to short-circuit a recently filed racial discrimination lawsuit.
The American Alliance for Equal Rights (AAER) filed a federal lawsuit last month against Ms. Ivey, a Republican, claiming that Alabama is implementing unconstitutional racial quotas in appointments to the Alabama Real Estate Appraisers Board (AREAB). The governor is being sued in her official capacity. AREAB, which was created in 1990, licenses and regulates real estate appraisers in Alabama.
After the lawsuit was initiated, the governor filed a slate of nominees in hopes of rendering the case moot and preventing the court from deciding on the issues involved, AAER’s lawyer argues.
The plaintiff, AAER, describes itself as “a not-for-profit 501(c)(3) membership organization dedicated to challenging distinctions and preferences made on the basis of race and ethnicity.” AAER is headquartered in Austin, Texas.
AAER’s president Edward Blum previously said his group was suing the state because “there are unfortunately dozens of government boards and commissions that exclude people because of their race or ethnicity. No one’s race should be used to include them, or exclude them, from service on government boards.”
Mr. Blum is also the founder of Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA). SFFA was a litigant in SFFA v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, a 2023 Supreme Court decision that struck down the use of racially discriminatory admissions policies at U.S. colleges.
After the ruling, a slew of lawsuits have been filed nationwide challenging race-based state and federal policies. Conservative groups such as America First Legal, the National Center for Public Policy Research, and the Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty have launched some of the litigation.
Under Alabama law, the nine-member board must have at least two members “of a minority race,” which AAER argues is a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the U.S. Constitution because it excludes qualified applicants based on race.
“It is demeaning, patronizing, un-American, and unconstitutional,” added the complaint.
Glenn Roper, a senior attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation (PLF), which is representing AAER, said Ms. Ivey was served with the legal complaint on Feb. 23.
“Although the governor has made no appointments to AREAB since 2021, less than a week after being served with the plaintiff’s lawsuit, she suddenly sent nominations to the [Alabama] Senate for all nine members of AREAB, in an attempt to thwart the alliance’s case.
“Rather than defending the AREAB’s discriminatory appointment policy, the governor is trying to keep the court from reaching it,” the lawyer said.
AAER is asking Judge R. Austin Huffaker Jr. for a temporary restraining order and a preliminary injunction requiring the governor to withdraw her nominations to the board while the U.S. District Court considers the merits of the group’s claim. Judge Huffaker was appointed by former President Donald Trump in 2019.
AAER is “dedicated to eliminating racial distinctions and preferences in America, and it has members who are qualified, ready, willing, and able to be appointed to AREAB.”
Allowing the governor’s nominations to move forward in the state’s Senate would harm AAER and its members by depriving them of equal consideration for a position on the board because of race, the group argued.
One of AAER’s members “is Member A, a citizen of Alabama and member of the Alliance who has applied for the currently vacant public member position on AREAB and satisfies all the nonracial criteria but is ineligible because she is not a racial minority.”
At the status hearing conducted by Judge Huffaker on March 12, the court scheduled a hearing on the motion for 9 a.m. Central Time on March 18. At the same time, the court directed the governor to respond to the motion by March 14. AAER may file a reply to the response by March 17.
The Alabama Senate is out of session but is scheduled to reconvene on March 19. The chamber’s Committee on Confirmations is scheduled to consider the pending nominations on March 20.
Mr. Roper told The Epoch Times that AAER is concerned that the slate of nominees to the board that the governor submitted takes into account race and is therefore constitutionally suspect.
“The individual who is part of the Alliance would like to be on the board,” the attorney said.
“If they fill all the slots, then there’s no longer an open slot for her to be considered for. And so because the governor is complying with this law which requires her to make these appointments on the basis of race, it would mean, this individual would not be considered fairly, she wouldn’t have a chance to be considered in a system that is not discriminating on the basis of race.”
Instead of defending the state policy on its merits, the governor “is trying to do an end run and get these slots filled to potentially moot our case and keep the court from considering our client’s claims,” Mr. Roper said.
During the March 12 status hearing, the governor’s attorneys said the nominations “have been in the works for a while and we even introduced them last year.”
Mr. Roper said, “Whatever the truth of that is, the facts are we filed our lawsuit, and then two weeks later they introduced this whole slate of nominations in what I think is a pretty transparent attempt to make our case go away, rather than dealing with this discriminatory statute.”
Promoted by vocal activists, “these mandates threaten the individual right to equality before the law, and without action, the problem is likely to worsen,” the report said.
The Epoch Times reached out to the state’s attorneys, Benjamin Seiss, and Brenton Smith in the Alabama Attorney General’s Office, for comment, but had not received a reply as of publication time.
