Lawsuit challenges alleged race-based hiring practices at University of Illinois

A new lawsuit is challenging the University of Illinois over alleged racial discrimination in its hiring practices as national pushback against diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs intensifies.

Professor Stephen Kleinschmit, represented by the Liberty Justice Center, alleges he was fired from the University of Illinois Chicago in August 2023 as a form of retaliation after he opposed several race-based hiring practices and programs that favored nonwhite applicants.

“We think that the time has really come to say that we’re no longer going to tolerate this kind of nonsense,” Liberty Justice Center attorney Reilly Stephens tells The Lion. “We’re no longer going to allow our public institutions to discriminate against people just because of how they look.” 

Before his termination, Kleinschmit had been a professor at UIC in the Department of Public Policy, Management, and Analytics since 2017. During his employment, Kleinschmit grew concerned “about the university’s fixation on race when interviewing and hiring faculty,” according to the Liberty Justice Center.  

The lawsuit, filed this week in a federal district court in Illinois, details at least five programs it alleges use illegal racial discrimination. Those programs, along with the “university’s activist culture” have resulted in “thousands of discriminatory candidate searches being conducted,” the lawsuit adds.  

“The University of Illinois is a public institution, and the public institutions are bound to follow the Constitution’s guarantees of equal protection,” Stephens tells The Lion. “That includes that their hiring decisions, their personnel decisions, cannot be on the basis of race or sex – and they have not adhered to that mandate. Rather, they fired Professor Kleinschmit for no other reason, really, than that he was the wrong skin color to meet their demographic goals, the wrong sex to meet their gender goals, and because he had the temerity to point out that this was illegal.” 

The school categorized Kleinschmit’s firing as a budget layoff but then “reposted basically the same job, saying minorities are encouraged to apply,” Stephens said. The university declined to comment when reached by The Lion, citing pending litigation.  

The lawsuit could pave the way for future legal action targeting DEI programs in higher education, as the initiatives have been increasingly politically and legally fraught.  

The Supreme Court’s June 2023 decision to strike down race-based affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard was an “incredibly helpful” precedent for race discrimination lawsuits, Stephens said.  

“It finally cleared up some of the squishiness around this,” he said. “And the way out of this is by treating everyone equally, by treating everyone on the basis of their merit and their character.”  

Between the Supreme Court’s decision and the Trump administration signaling that it seeks to dismantle DEI, there will likely be similar lawsuits in the future, he added. 

Kleinschmit’s lawyers are asking the court to halt the university’s alleged race-based practices and seeking financial compensation for the professor’s lost earnings “due to UIC’s illegal actions.” 

“We are hoping that in doing that, we can set an example that will discourage other institutions from continuing to behave like this,” Stephens said.