Today, a group of civil rights organizations sent a letter to the University of Michigan Law School calling on the institution to affirm its commitment to providing equal educational opportunities for its Black, Latino, Indigenous, female, and LGBTQ+ students in response to a discriminatory email suggesting their lack of qualifications to be accepted onto the Michigan Law Review. The group signing today’s letter includes the Legal Defense Fund (LDF), LatinoJustice PRLDEF, Asian Americans Advancing Justice – AAJC, and the National Women’s Law Center.
The email was purportedly sent to University of Michigan Law School students by a group called Faculty, Alumni, and Students Opposed to Racial Preferences (FASORP), which operates as an anonymous membership organization. The email, sent on March 31, 2025, threatens litigation and accuses the Michigan Law Review of using race, sex, gender identity, and sexual orientation preferences in its student selection and article publishing processes without providing evidence in support of its allegations. It specifically targets students of color, LGBTQ+ students, and female students, insinuating that these groups are not qualified to have positions on the journal and unworthy of being selected for publication. The email also threatens these students with public exposure on social media and harm to their future careers if their positions are deemed to have been secured through what the email refers to as “diversity bonuses.”
In their letter, the civil rights organizations draw attention to the negative effects of the FASORP email on law students and scholars, including the potential of women, LGBTQ+, and/or students of diverse racial and ethnic backgrounds to forego seeking educational opportunities, like law review, out of fear of future harassment.
The group issued the following statement alongside today’s letter:
We strongly condemn these threats as an unjust attack on students’ abilities and an attempt to perpetuate harmful stereotypes and discrimination. No student should be told that their identity makes them undeserving of their accomplishments. We hope the University of Michigan Law School will further affirm its commitment to diversity, equal opportunity, and excellence, ensuring that the hard work and talents of students from all backgrounds are valued and respected.
We also stand in solidarity with students at the University of Michigan Law School and throughout the country who are facing similar threats to their education and careers. These divisive threats will not—and should not—deter efforts to comply with our equal opportunity laws and advance a more inclusive, equitable, and just educational system.
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Founded in 1940, the Legal Defense Fund (LDF) is the nation’s first civil rights law organization. LDF’s Equal Protection Initiative seeks to defend and advance the proper interpretation of the Equal Protection Clause and anti-discrimination law so that we can all continue to advance equal opportunity for all. In media attributions, please refer to us as the Legal Defense Fund or LDF. Please note that LDF has been completely separate from the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) since 1957—although LDF was originally founded by the NAACP and shares its commitment to equal rights.
