Appeals court blocks Fearless Fund from awarding grants to Black women
Appeals court blocks Fearless Fund from awarding grants to Black women
Title seems to be misleading.
Per this article, it blocks the Fearless Fund from awarding grants only to black women. I haven't read the Post article because it's paywalled, but their version seems to have forgotten that very important detail.
The headline is technically correct. The fund is for grants to disadvantaged populations. They are not able to issue those grants until the litigation finishes
A panel on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled Monday that an Atlanta-based venture capital firm should be temporarily blocked from issuing grants reserved for businesses owned by Black women, saying that doing so would probably discriminate against business owners of other races.
The ruling comes after Fearless Fund, a VC firm dedicated to funding businesses founded by women of color, was sued last August by a group led by affirmative-action opponent Edward Blum. Blum’s cases against Harvard and the University of North Carolina culminated with the Supreme Court overturning race-conscious college admissions last summer.
The federal appeals court in Atlanta reversed a lower-court decision that the fund could proceed with its grant contest amid the litigation.
…
The appeals panel ruled 2-1 that allowing the $20,000 awards to be issued under the fund’s Fearless Strivers Grant Contest would be “substantially likely” to violate a federal statute that prohibits racial discrimination in contracts. The panel also ruled that the plaintiffs, who were not identified by name in their legal complaint, had standing to proceed with their case.
The judges in the majority, Kevin Newsom and Robert Luck, were appointed by President Donald Trump. The dissenting judge, Robin Rosenbaum, was appointed by President Barack Obama.
I'm assuming this is a racial discrimination issue. Unfortunately I can't read the article. I don't know where I stand on this, on the one hand I understand the historical disparity and the need to support the black community, on the other hand I want literally everything to be truly equal which I'm aware will never happen.
The difficulty is that the only way to achieve equal status is through equitable treatment. But some people don't want equitable treatment, oftentimes because they don't want equal status.
And this is really the legal issue at hand. Is equitable treatment allowed, where we consider things like centuries of oppression against women and BIPOCs. If we can consider that, a grant meant to spur women and minority-owned businesses makes sense. If we move to a rare blind system, that does not make sense.