[Red State] Following a decision by the Minnesota Public Schools, a new policy has been enacted that will lay off white teachers first — if the district needs to downsize, white teachers will be fired first.

As my colleague Jeff Charles reported, the agreement states:

"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."

Following the decision, constitutional lawyer Hans Bader wrote an op-ed, as noted by my colleague, which states:

"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. The Third Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 1996 that an 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. That ruling was Taxman v. Board of Education of Piscataway, 91 F.3d 1547 (3d Cir. 1996)."

Despite the backlash this blatantly racist policy has received, it was recently defended by the president and vice president of the Minneapolis Federation of Teachers. On Friday, in an appearance on ABC, Greta Callahan, president of the teachers’ union, said: