Winston & Strawn Defends DEI Fellowship Amid Lawsuit Threat

Winston & Strawn plans to continue with its diversity fellowship program despite being threatened with a lawsuit by a prominent affirmative action foe.

“Our program is appropriate, legal and compliant and it will continue,” Winston partner Cardelle Spangler wrote Friday in a letter to lawyers for Edward Blum’s American Alliance for Equal Rights.

The group last week sent letters to Winston & Strawn and two other law firms—Hunton Andrews & Kurth and Adams and Reese—threatening to sue the firms if they did not scrap diversity fellowship programs or revise eligibility criteria. The programs violate federal law by excluding certain participants based on race, according to the group.

Winston’s “1L Leadership Council on Legal Diversity Scholar Program” does not limit applications based on race or ethnicity, Spangler said in the letter. The program is open to first-year law students who are members of a “disadvantaged and/or historically underrepresented group in the legal profession,” show an interest in working at Winston after graduation, and have high academic achievement and leadership skills.

“Your implication that the terms ‘disadvantaged’ and ‘historically underrepresented’ necessarily refer to race is baseless,” Spangler said in her letter to the group. “Winston & Strawn does not make employment decisions on the basis of race or ethnicity.”

Winston did not answer immediate requests for comment.

Blum’s group dropped lawsuits against Perkins Coie and Morrison Foerster after those firms revised their fellowship programs to remove references to race. Adams and Reese told the Blum group that the firm does not plan to accept applications for its “1L Minority Fellowship.” Hunton Andrews declined to respond to the group’s inquiries, according to the firm’s general counsel Greg Waller.

Private-sector DEI initiatives are under higher scrutiny since Blum’s lawsuit against Harvard University triggered a June Supreme Court decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions.

Waller acknowledged that Hunton may still tinker with the program’s application standards.

“As we do every year, we are currently in the process of reviewing and formulating job descriptions and application materials for the Firm’s 1L Diversity Clerkship program for 2024,” the letter read. “We may very well make changes to that program, in response to changing legal considerations or otherwise.”