In the cult of DEI, it seems the State Bar of Wisconsin has a particular kind of white guy in mind for its programs. 

In 2024, a liaison to the Bar’s Board of Governors explained on a nomination form, “I don’t really know [this nominee]’s background except that he appears to be a white man from northern Wisconsin who plays a sort of large instrument.”

“However, he is very different from what you might expect because he is very open, engaging, and comfortable with all races, ethnicities, genders, and backgrounds,” the Bar official wrote, according to documents obtained by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL). 

Notably, Mr. “large instrument” made the cut last year for a Wisconsin Bar leadership program. Curiously, according to documents reviewed by The Federalist, every nominee not selected for the leadership program was either Asian or white, with the exception of a black man who could not physically appear. 

The attorney association’s Leadership Development Committee listed on spreadsheets just three attributes for each nominee: “Ethnicity,” “Gender,” and “Age,” the Milwaukee-based public interest law firm wrote in a draft brief. The documents are filled with racial preferences in the left-leaning association’s practices in the name of “diversity, equity, and inclusion.” 

‘DEI is Dead’

The State Bar of Wisconsin has agreed to remove “harmful and discriminatory” DEI from its programs under an agreement with WILL to settle a federal lawsuit. Bar officials also agreed to stop using “race, religion, sex, or other characteristics when determining eligibility for its programs,” according to WILL’s press release.

“For now, DEI is dead at the State Bar of Wisconsin,” WILL Deputy Counsel Dan Lennington told The Federalist in an interview. “Race discrimination should play no role in the regulation or training of Wisconsin’s lawyers, and it no longer does. We will continue to monitor the Bar closely and challenge race-based programs wherever we find them.”

Asked if the Bar must pay legal fees, Lennington said he’s only allowed to say that there’s a confidentiality clause in the agreement.  

‘Legal Repercussions’

The settlement is a year-and-a-half in the making. WILL filed its lawsuit in December 2023, alleging the State Bar of Wisconsin was promoting discriminatory DEI practices, including its “Diversity Clerkship Program.” The program offers paid internships to law students at top Wisconsin employers. 

“Not all law students may participate, however. The eligibility requirements and selection and matching processes discriminate between students based on various protected traits, primarily race,” the complaint states.  

Even Milwaukee County Circuit Court Judge Carl Ashley, a promoter of the Bar program, has “conceded it was probably illegal,” according to the complaint. 

“I have to tell you in all candor that there is concern and there has been concerned voiced about the legal repercussions of isolating people, minorities, at the exclusion of others and the potential lawsuits associated with that … Most of us are pretty convinced it’s not gotten any less problematic over time,” Ashley said on video in his 2013 Diversity Task Force report. 

His concerns were understandable. A report by the task force acknowledged the program uses “race-based selection criteria” and recommended “[m]onitor[ing] and evaluat[ing]” relevant developments in “case law.” 

WILL alleged that the program, and others like it, runs afoul of the Fourteenth Amendment of the U.S. Constitution and the 71-year-old landmark Brown v. Board of Education, which demands educational and employment opportunities “must be made available to all on equal terms.” 

The program also infringed on Bar members’ First Amendment rights because it required them to fund an unconstitutional program, Lennington said. Daniel Suhr, a constitutional conservative, public-interest litigator and Wisconsin Bar member, was the plaintiff in the lawsuit. He objected to having to pay hundreds of dollars a year for his membership, money used to promote programs, policies and messaging he finds discriminatory and objectionable. For instance, the Bar on its website pushes Black Lives Matter ideology vilifying police and claiming that “Black Americans suffer from police brutality and crippling fear caused by systemic racism and implicit bias that is ingrained in our legal system, law enforcement institutions, and countless other facets of American life.”

‘I am a Queer, Fat Woman’

Internal communications show the program wasn’t geared to the most qualified candidates but to students with “backgrounds that have been historically excluded from the legal field.” Employers were happy to accommodate.  

The Dane County Corporation Counsel asked the Bar to distribute information to law students stating that “women and racial and ethnic minorities are especially encouraged to apply.”

Answering an internal concern about the program, an assistant corporation counsel said, “[o]ur goal is less about finding the perfect fit for us, but more about raising our profile among potential minority candidates,” according to public records obtained by WILL. Dane County Corporation Counsel Carlos Pabellon responded, “100 percent.” 

Students in the program also had to “demonstrate a commitment to diversity,” the Bar’s website stated. And to inclusive “spaces.”

“As a mixed White and Mexican, bisexual woman in a white, Catholic suburb of Milwaukee, WI, I quickly learned that advocacy often only went so far,” one applicant wrote. 

“I am a queer, fat woman,” another candidate wrote. 

In their recommendations of nominees to the leadership summit, Bar officials — including a former Bar president, chair of the Bar’s Board of Governors, and a liaison to the Board of Governors — clearly fixated on race and other immutable categories.

“Morgan is a Milwaukee-native who identifies as a Black woman. I am most impressed with all of her pro bono work in law school, as well as her opportunities to work with community organizations like Near Westside Partners and the Milwaukee Bucks,” one State Bar official wrote.

“Kate is a Wisconsin-born and raised, female, and is the lovely spouse to a Paraguay native,” another official stated.

The Bar continued to keep its coveted race/ethnicity/gender spreadsheets, even after moving to an essay format for the leadership summit applications, according to the draft complaint.

“When the Bar could not figure out the race of an applicant, it admitted in documents that it made ‘visual guesses’ about multiple applicants’ ‘ethnicity,’ labeling three as black because Bar employees determined that they looked black,” the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty said in a press release. That sounds, well, kind of racist. 

‘Many Lawsuits’

Earlier this year, the American Alliance for Equal Rights filed a federal complaint alleging that the American Bar Association’s Legal Opportunity Scholarship racially discriminates. Alliance President Ed Blum, who brought the successful Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard outlawing race-based admissions in higher education, said the ABA must be aware of the many lawsuits successfully challenging “race-exclusive law firm internships and fellowship programs.” 

“That the ABA hasn’t ended their minority-only scholarship should distress the entire membership,” Blum said a press release.

WILL has filed another federal complaint alleging the ABA “runs at least nine racially discriminatory programs.”  

“An organization that should be dedicated to ‘liberty and justice for all’ has continued to pursue programs that are discriminatory and unjust,” Skylar Croy, WILL associate counsel, said in a press release. 

The State Bar of Wisconsin has insisted that it has successfully “defended” its problematic Diversity Clerkship Program. In a snippy press release, following a partial settlement in April 2024, the Bar said the program will “continue unchanged, despite what the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty is publicly claiming.” The group issued a similar release following the most recent settlement, asserting that the leadership programs “will continue unencumbered.” 

A Bar spokesman could not be reached for comment Monday afternoon.

Dismantling DEI 

Lennington said the settlement was a big victory for WILL, its client, and the effort to remove discriminatory DEI programs in the law. There seems to be some encumbering involved in the settlement. The Bar must remove “discriminatory DEI language” from its Leadership Development Summit and Leadership Academy programs, as it was supposed to do in the Diversity Clerkship Program, and it is not to consider race-ethnicity, or other immutable characteristics when considering applicants for the programs, according to WILL. And the lawyer’s association must be more transparent about how it spends its mandatory dues, including publishing an annual list of chargeable activities. 

“We got the State Bar to acknowledge that — whatever they want to call it, diversity or inclusion —  they will no longer be considering anyone’s race or other immutable characteristics when they offer employment or benefits, which they have been doing for several years,” Lennington said.