Edward Jay Blum is a
conservative legal strategist known for his activism against
affirmative action based on
race and
ethnicity
An ethnic group or an ethnicity is a grouping of people who identify with each other on the basis of shared attributes that distinguish them from other groups. Those attributes can include common sets of traditions, ancestry, language, history, ...
.
He connects potential plaintiffs with attorneys who are willing to represent them in "test cases" which he tries to use to set legal precedents. He is the director and sole member of the Project on Fair Representation, which he founded in 2005. According to its website, the Project focuses specifically on voting, education, contracting, employment, racial quotas, and racial reparations. Since the 1990s, Blum has been heavily involved in bringing eight cases to the United States Supreme Court. He is a key figure in the ''
'' lawsuit.
Early life
Blum was born into a Jewish family in
Benton Harbor, Michigan
Benton Harbor is a city in Berrien County in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is 46 miles southwest of Kalamazoo and 71 miles southwest of Grand Rapids. According to the 2020 census, its population was 9,103. It is the smaller, by population, of ...
, where his parents owned and operated the local shoe store.
He graduated from the
University of Texas at Austin
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
in 1973. He then studied West African writers for a year at the
State University of New York at New Paltz
The State University of New York at New Paltz (SUNY New Paltz or New Paltz) is a public university in New Paltz, New York. It traces its origins to the New Paltz Classical School, a secondary institution founded in 1828 and reorganized as an a ...
.
He describes his parents as generally
left-wing
Left-wing politics describes the range of political ideologies that support and seek to achieve social equality and egalitarianism, often in opposition to social hierarchy. Left-wing politics typically involve a concern for those in soci ...
liberals who supported
Democratic presidents like
Franklin Roosevelt
Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...
and
Harry S. Truman
Harry S. Truman (May 8, 1884December 26, 1972) was the 33rd president of the United States, serving from 1945 to 1953. A leader of the Democratic Party, he previously served as the 34th vice president from January to April 1945 under Franklin ...
and that he was, eventually, "the first Republican my mother ever met".
He has said that the
anti-Semitic discrimination his family experienced during his youth helped form his beliefs.
Political interest
While working as a stock broker in
Houston, Texas
Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
in the early 80s, he became involved in the
neoconservatism
Neoconservatism is a political movement that began in the United States during the 1960s among liberal hawks who became disenchanted with the increasingly pacifist foreign policy of the Democratic Party and with the growing New Left and ...
movement. In 1990, he realized that the Democratic incumbent in his congressional district,
Craig Anthony Washington
Craig Anthony Washington (born October 12, 1941) is an American lawyer and Democratic Party politician from Texas who served in the Texas State Senate and the United States House of Representatives.
The son of Roy and Azalia Washington, Washin ...
, was running unopposed, so decided to run against him for the
Republican Party
Republican Party is a name used by many political parties around the world, though the term most commonly refers to the United States' Republican Party.
Republican Party may also refer to:
Africa
*Republican Party (Liberia)
* Republican Part ...
. During that campaign, Blum and his wife Lark went door-knocking and realized that the boundaries of their district erratically divided streets based on ethnicity, with the suspected purpose to
gerrymander a majority African-American district in order to grant increased voting power to minorities.
Blum eventually lost the congressional race. But he and others filed a lawsuit against the state of Texas, claiming that the racially gerrymandered districts violated the Fourteenth Amendment. The case, ''
Bush v. Vera
''Bush v. Vera'', 517 U.S. 952 (1996), is a Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court case concerning racial gerrymandering, where Majority-minority district, racial minority majority-electoral districts were created during T ...
'', went to the Supreme Court, which ruled in Blum's favor.
[
]
Activism
Blum holds a fellowship at the American Enterprise Institute (AEI). His areas of research at AEI include civil rights
Civil and political rights are a class of rights that protect individuals' freedom from infringement by governments, social organizations, and private individuals. They ensure one's entitlement to participate in the civil and political life of ...
policy, affirmative action, multiculturalism
The term multiculturalism has a range of meanings within the contexts of sociology, political philosophy, and colloquial use. In sociology and in everyday usage, it is a synonym for "Pluralism (political theory), ethnic pluralism", with the tw ...
, and redistricting
Redistribution (re-districting in the United States and in the Philippines) is the process by which electoral districts are added, removed, or otherwise changed. Redistribution is a form of boundary delimitation that changes electoral dist ...
. He has also written the book, ''The Unintended Consequences of Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act'' (2007).
His litigation includes United States Supreme Court
The Supreme Court of the United States (SCOTUS) is the highest court in the federal judiciary of the United States. It has ultimate appellate jurisdiction over all U.S. federal court cases, and over state court cases that involve a point o ...
cases ''Bush v. Vera
''Bush v. Vera'', 517 U.S. 952 (1996), is a Supreme Court of the United States, United States Supreme Court case concerning racial gerrymandering, where Majority-minority district, racial minority majority-electoral districts were created during T ...
'' (1996), ''Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder
''Northwest Austin Municipal Utility District No. 1 v. Holder'', 557 U.S. 193 (2009), was a decision of the United States Supreme Court regarding Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, and in particular its requirement that proposed electoral ...
'' (2009), '' Fisher v. University of Texas'' (2013), ''Shelby County v. Holder
''Shelby County v. Holder'', 570 U.S. 529 (2013), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States regarding the constitutionality of two provisions of the Voting Rights Act of 1965: Section 5, which requires certain states a ...
'' (2013), '' Evenwel v. Abbott'' (2016), and '' Fisher v. University of Texas II'' (2016).
In ''Shelby County'', the Supreme Court struck down Section 4 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, which subjected certain states and parts of states to federal scrutiny when they tried to modify voting procedures. This scrutiny, known as "preclearance", was intended to prevent states from enacting voting procedures that disproportionately burden racial minorities. After unsuccessfully lobbying Congress to modify the preclearance rules in the Act's 2006 reauthorization, Blum set out to challenge the Act's constitutionality in court. He wanted to change or eliminate the law because it had led to the pro-minority gerrymandering which he encountered in the 1990s when he ran for Congress.
In ''Evenwel'', Blum recruited Texas voters to sue Texas in a constitutional test case. Texas, like other states, divides its state legislative districts in a way that equalizes the total population of each district. However, some districts have more eligible voters than others because they have fewer minors, non-citizen immigrants, and convicted felons. Blum and his recruited plaintiffs contended that this discriminates against voters in districts with high numbers of eligible voters, since each person's vote has less power. They wanted the Supreme Court to mandate that districts be drawn based on voter-eligible population rather than total population. In an April 2016 ruling, the Supreme Court upheld Texas's district scheme.
The ''Fisher'' case, which challenged the University of Texas's consideration of race in its undergraduate admissions process, was decided at the Supreme Court in 2013 and again in 2016. The first time, the Court bolstered the legal standard that universities must satisfy if they wish to consider race, emphasizing that the use of race is only permissible if race-neutral alternatives would be ineffective at producing campus diversity. The second time, the Court applied the heightened legal standard to UT's admission policy, concluding that it passes muster and upholding it.
Project on Fair Representation
Edward Blum is also challenging race-conscious admissions policies at other selective universities, claiming that they do not comply with the strict legal standard set forth in Fisher. To that end, he has founded Students for Fair Admissions
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) is an organization headed by Edward Blum that represented over 20,000 students and parents who allege they have been rejected by selective universities due to their races, and file lawsuits on their behalf. I ...
, an offshoot of the Project on Fair Representation. This organization seeks to recruit students who have been rejected by selective universities and file lawsuits on their behalf. Specifically, Blum is targeting Harvard University, the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, and the University of Wisconsin at Madison. He set up websites called harvardnotfair.org, uncnotfair.org, and uwnotfair.org to attract plaintiffs. Students for Fair Admissions, led by Blum, filed federal lawsuits against Harvard
Harvard University is a private Ivy League research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Founded in 1636 as Harvard College and named for its first benefactor, the Puritan clergyman John Harvard, it is the oldest institution of higher le ...
and UNC-Chapel Hill in November 2014. (SFFA has not sued UW-Madison thus far). On October 1, 2019 the Court ruled in favor of Harvard University. In the 130-page ruling, Judge Burroughs found that the University did not discriminate on the basis of race, did not engage in racial balancing or the use of quotas, and did not place too much emphasis on race when considering an applicant’s admissions file. She also wrote that, "Harvard has demonstrated that no workable and available race-neutral alternatives would allow it to achieve a diverse student body while still maintaining its standards for academic excellence." Other cases are pending in federal district court. Unlike the Fisher case, in which the plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, made herself public, the students rejected by Harvard and UNC have not revealed their identities because they want to shield themselves from potential retaliation. Rather, the named plaintiff is simply "Students for Fair Admissions", and that organization is prepared to assure the courts that it does in fact have members who were injured by the universities' use of race.
Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment
Edward Blum is listed as the President of the Alliance for Fair Board Recruitment, which is the plaintiff in lawsuits challenging diversity requirements for boards of certain publicly traded companies. The group has sued to challenge California's race and gender quotas, and Nasdaq
The Nasdaq Stock Market () (National Association of Securities Dealers Automated Quotations Stock Market) is an American stock exchange based in New York City. It is the most active stock trading venue in the US by volume, and ranked second ...
's comply-or-explain rule.
Works
*
See also
*Abigail Thernstrom
Abigail Thernstrom (September 14, 1936 – April 10, 2020) was an American political scientist and a leading conservative scholar on race relations, voting rights and education. She was an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, ...
*Stephan Thernstrom
Stephan Thernstrom (born November 5, 1934) is an American academic and historian who is the Winthrop Research Professor of History Emeritus at Harvard University. He is a specialist in ethnic and social history and was the editor of the ''Harvard ...
References
Further reading
*
*
*
*Hartocollis, Anemona (November 19, 2017)
"He Took On the Voting Rights Act and Won. Now He’s Taking On Harvard."
''The New York Times.'' Retrieved November 29, 2017.
External links
Project on Fair Representation
– Official website
SCOTUSblog On Camera: Edward Blum
– Interview by SCOTUSblog
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blum, Edward
Year of birth missing (living people)
Living people
People from Benton Harbor, Michigan
State University of New York at New Paltz alumni
University of Texas at Austin alumni
American Jews
Opposition to affirmative action