Lawsuit challenges Wisconsin Bar’s diversity clerkship program

The latest legal battle over diversity in Wisconsin is taking aim at the State Bar.

The Wisconsin Institute for Law and Liberty on Wednesday filed a lawsuit challenging the State Bar of Wisconsin’s Diversity Clerkship Program.

The lawsuit claims that following the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action at Harvard, there is now a federal civil rights case to be made for color blind treatment for everyone.

“When the government discriminates based on race, it sows more division in our country and violates the Constitution in the process,” WILL Associate Counsel Skylar Croy, said.

The new case focuses on dues-paying members of the Bar, including white attorney Daniel Suhr.

“Internships are competitive – as they should be. But when one group is given preferential treatment over the other to apply for these programs, the programs lose competitiveness and hurt all Americans,” Suhr said. “This also goes against my beliefs entirely. The State Bar should do better and expand these opportunities to all Wisconsin law students.”

Suhr, like all attorneys in Wisconsin, is required to be a bar member. He said he doesn’t want his donations going toward a program that discriminates.

WILL’s Dan Lennington said on social media there are also allegations of discrimination among the minority applicants who interviewed for the Diversity Clerkship Program.

“Records reveal rampant race discrimination, including against black students, who felt ‘pigeonholed’ by ‘social justice’ questions and then shown disappointment when their hardship wasn't ‘bad enough,’” Lennington added.

This is not the first time the Bar’s Diversity Clerkship Program has been questioned for bias.

Judge Carl Ashley in 2014 raised concerns the program could face future legal challenges.

The Diversity Clerkship Program is a 10-week, paid, summer internship open to first-year law students at the University of Wisconsin or Marquette University.

It is only open to students who, as the State Bar puts it, have “backgrounds that have been historically excluded from the legal field.”

Students are required to write an essay about their personal battles that explains how they’ve been “affected by diversity, contributed to diversity, or hope to contribute to diversity in the future.”

The program also requires a demonstration of “a commitment to diversity and a record of academic achievement.”

WILL’s lawsuit is based on a case out of California that said the State Bar there could not force dues-paying-members to pay for non-essential issues that are outside of the bar’s main focus.