Stephen Miller's America First Legal Foundation has joined the fight to restore merit-based hiring in the federal government, continuing on President Donald Trump's vow to rid the U.S. of the former President Jimmy Carter's diversity, equity, and inclusion agenda.
The AFL is reportedly arguing that the government has been being forced for the past four decades to pass over more qualified candidates in order to hire on race and gender.
"America is missing out on top talent because of an illegal, 44-year-old consent decree," AFL senior counsel Nick Barry told Fox News. "We must move back to merit-based evaluations.
"Race, color, and other immutable characteristics have no place in that evaluation."
AFL has signed on to the Washington, D.C., case seeking to terminate the Carter-era "Luevano Consent Decree," which was a deal between the outgoing Carter administration in 1979 and Black and Hispanic plaintiffs seeking to end merit-based hiring and written tests for employment so the U.S. government would hire more Blacks and Hispanics.
"The United States has concluded that the more than four-decade-old consent decree entered in this case (the 'Luevano Consent Decree' or 'Decree') is no longer in the public interest," the lawsuit filed March 25 read. "The Decree discriminates based on race and blatantly conflicts with Supreme Court caselaw from the decades following the entry of the Decree.
"Additionally, the standards in the Decree have proven wholly unworkable and have impeded the President's ability to properly staff the Executive Branch.
"For these and the other reasons explained in the accompanying memorandum, the United States requests that the Luevano Consent Decree be terminated."
Trump has vowed in the 2024 election to end race-based hiring practices in America, and his administration has faced widespread Democrat obstruction from activists, lawyers, and Democrat-appointed judges in stopping some of his plans by judicial action.
"Being able to recruit the best and brightest to work in Washington returns dividends for the country by doing more with less," AFL Vice President Dan Epstein told Fox News. "That is what all Americans deserve from their government.
"Public service is a public trust. Presidential administrations from both parties have long advocated ending unaccountable bureaucracies that fail to do a good turn for the American people."