The legal standoff between Minnesota and the federal government continues to escalate, as the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division sued the state on Wednesday over its race-based and sex-based hiring policies.
The litigation comes the same week that Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison announced a joint lawsuit by the state and the cities of St. Paul and Minneapolis against the presence of U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement in the two cities.
Prior to those lawsuits, federal prosecutors had charged nearly 100 people in Minnesota welfare fraud schemes that have been estimated to have exceeded $9 billion. Whistleblowers have also alleged that state and federal lawmakers were involved in a cover-up of the fraud.
The Justice Department’s lawsuit stems from the state’s affirmative action goals, which seek to balance the sex and race composition of its workforce with that of the civilian labor force in its staffing and personnel decisions.
The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the District of Minnesota.
The Justice Department is “on the side of Minnesotans” and “stepped in to hold the state accountable,” said U.S. Attorney Daniel N. Rosen for the District of Minnesota.
“Minnesotans already had to see their state officials let criminals brazenly walk off with over a billion taxpayer dollars,” Rosen said in a public statement. “Now they see those same officials abusing their power by systematically and unlawfully branding jobseekers as the wrong race or sex.”
The state’s affirmative action mandate unlawfully discriminates against employees and prospective employees, and classifies them based on their race and sex in violation of Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Justice Department argues.
“Because staffing is a zero-sum game, when Minnesota gives preferences to employees or prospective employees on the basis of their race, color, national origin, and sex, it inevitably and necessarily discriminates against other employees or prospective employees because of their race, color, national origin, and sex,” the complaint says.
Ellison’s office did not immediately respond to an inquiry from The Daily Signal for this story. Also, the office of Minnesota Gov. Tim Walz did not immediately respond.
In what he called a “direct appeal” to President Donald Trump, Walz made a general statement Thursday about the confrontation between his state and the federal government.
“Let’s turn the temperature down. Stop this campaign of retribution,” Walz posted.
The Supreme Court halted the practice of using race as a factor in college admissions in its Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, noted Assistant Attorney General Harmeet Dhillon of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
“This case is the next logical step,” Dhillon said in a statement, adding that federal civil rights law “protects all people from race and sex discrimination in employment. There is no exception that allows discrimination against employees who aren’t considered ‘underrepresented.’”
In a recent development of the unfolding legal drama between the federal government and Minnesota, a federal judge on Wednesday halted the U.S. Department of Agriculture from withholding $80 million for food stamps while the state reviewed 100,000 recipients for potential fraud.
