DEI Lawsuit Against UC Dismissed on Standing Grounds

As we noted back in November, a lawsuit against mandated DEI statements in the community colleges led to a temporary injunction barring their implementation based on a "likelihood" that the case would succeed.* On the other hand, a lawsuit against such statements at UC seems to have failed, since the plaintiff never actually applied for a job at UC. From the NY Times:

A federal judge threw out a lawsuit that challenged the University of California system’s requirement that applicants for faculty positions must file diversity statements. The court, which issued the ruling on Friday, did not rule on the merits, but said that the plaintiff lacked standing to sue because he never actually applied for the open faculty position that he singled out in his suit.

Diversity statements — also known as diversity, equity and inclusion, or D.E.I., statements — ask candidates seeking a faculty job or promotion to describe how they would contribute to campus diversity. In his lawsuit, John Haltigan, who has a Ph.D. in developmental psychology, said he would have applied to a position at U.C. Santa Cruz, but that the D.E.I. statement made his application futile, since he is “committed to colorblindness and viewpoint diversity.” The lawsuit contended that the requirement acts as a “functional loyalty oath,” violating his rights under the First Amendment...

The court gave Mr. Haltigan three weeks to amend the complaint. “We will consider all avenues to vindicate our client’s First Amendment rights,” said Wilson Freeman, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation [which is supporting the lawsuit]...

Full story at https://www.nytimes.com/2024/01/13/us/lawsuit-dei-university-of-california.html.

Yours truly, a nonlawyer, interprets the statement "consider all avenues..." to be something less than a guarantee to proceed with this particular plaintiff. It would seem that finding someone who actually applied or was employed by UC as a plaintiff would resolve the standing issue. But that's just me. And on the other hand, the Supreme Court ruled on behalf of a self-proclaimed wedding website designer who was in fact never asked to plan a same-sex wedding.** So what do I know?

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*https://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2023/11/community-college-dei-requirements.html.

**303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, 21-476.