According to Alpha News, the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers (MFT) struck a deal with the Minneapolis Public Schools to include a provision in the new contract that calls for dismissing white teachers before "teachers of color" if there needs to be any lay-offs or reassignments. The provision was reportedly added in March as a means of ending a two-week teacher's strike.
“Starting with the Spring 2023 Budget Tie-Out Cycle, if excessing a teacher who is a member of a population underrepresented among licensed teachers in the site, the District shall excess the next least senior teacher, who is not a member of an underrepresented population,” the agreement reads.
Per the United Federation of Teachers, “excessing” is defined as “reducing staff in a particular school when there is a reduction in the number of available positions in a title or license area in that school.”
The agreement goes on to note that non-white teachers, as well as those working in various programs, “may be exempted from district-wide layoff[s] outside seniority order.” The document goes on to prioritize the reinstatement of teachers from “underrepresented populations” over white teachers.
Naturally, supporters of the provision are defending it as a way to ‘retain’ teachers of color.
“It can be a national model, and schools in other states are looking to emulate what we did,” Edward Barlow, a member of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers executive board, told the Minneapolis Star Tribune, according to The College Fix. “Even though it doesn’t do everything that we wanted it to do, it’s still a huge move forward for the retention of teachers of color.”
“Past discrimination by the District disproportionately impacted the hiring of underrepresented teachers in the District, as compared to the relevant labor market and the community, and resulted in a lack of diversity of teachers,” the agreement adds -- of course, without providing a shred of evidence that there indeed was "past discrimination by the district."
However, Hans Bader, a Washington, D.C.-based attorney familiar with such cases, said the provision is patently unconstitutional, regardless of intent.
“It is illegal under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act. When it comes to termination (as opposed to hiring or promotion under an affirmative-action plan), an employer can’t racially discriminate even against whites,” he writes.
“The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 that an [sic] school district can’t consider race even as a tie-breaker, in deciding who to lay off, even to promote diversity, because that (a) unduly trammels the white teacher’s rights — even affirmative action plans are supposed to be mild and not unduly trammel someone’s rights, and getting fired as opposed to being denied a promotion unduly trammels someone’s rights — and (b) putting that aside, the school district couldn’t consider race to promote diversity when black people weren’t seriously underrepresented in its workforce as a whole,” he added. “That ruling was Taxman v. Board of Education of Piscataway, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996).”
“It is also unconstitutional, for more complicated reasons, under the Supreme Court’s decision in Wygant v. Jackson Board of Education (1986),” Bader continued. “In that case, the Supreme Court overturned race-based layoffs by a 5-to-4 vote.
“Five justices said a school district can’t lay off white teachers to remedy societal discrimination against blacks. Four of those five also said that the Constitution forbids laying off people based on race (as opposed to considering race in hiring and promotions) even to remedy a school district’s own discrimination,” he said.
Democrat leftists are destroying the social fabric of society, and there is no way to restore it without major upheaval.
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