Sherrilyn Ifill - Strategically Confronting Justice

to do. You know, it was hard. I love the Legal Defense Funds where I started my career, and I love the work, and um, I feel like I was made for that position. But I also feel like, um, I let it at the right moment. You know that that almost ten years that I let the organization was right for me. And I really believe transition as part

of leadership. I think, especially in the civil rights space, sometimes we we hold on a little too long, and I think it's healthy for our organizations when we passed that mantle. And fortunately for me, I had an amazing deputy, jan A Nelson who's now the head of the organization, and I know that she can continue the work well. And I have things I want to do. Um, because the work is not finished. Okay, yes, and you said that, Uh, well you've said that if you were in the private

sector that you would be able to cover of Forbes magazine. Well, nonprofits get you know, we don't get we don't get no respect. When does the Rodney Dantaville used to say, and that, Um, it's very hard to do this job. And in addition to doing the substantive work, you're a business leader, you're leading a staff. I mean I grew LDF five times the size it was in staff, in budget, in endowment. Um. And that's not not a small thing.

And you know, I think if you're if you're running a for profit company and you do that, you know, people consider you a financial wizard and a superstar. And I think I was a superstars. Um. And so I think it's important to say it. But does the nonprofit allow you to do more of the type of work that you want to do, like to achieve the goals that you want, or like, could you do that the same work like in the privacy No. I mean when I was a little girl, I wanted to become a

civil rights lawyer. That's what I wanted. I wanted to be in a position where I could strategically confront issues of inequality and injustice wherever they are, however they appear. Sometimes that means, you know that we sue corporations, sometimes we sue states, sometimes we sue cities, um. And so the nonprofit space allows us to be you know, independent, We don't take any money from government, and that allows

us to do whatever we have to do. Because you know, racism and white supremacy is a complex structure and if you want to get at it structurally, you have to be able to meet it where those structures are kind of manifesting the injustice. And you don't want to be restricted in that who gave you money or um. You know, by the rules of government. You want to be able to really get at it. So I love being in

the nonprofit sector. I just want us to feel worthy of the kind of respect that people get in the for profit sector for all the aspects of what we do, and in fact, we do a little bit, we do a lot with a little bit and um, and we do it gladly and joyfully because of our commitment to the work. So it's just I love the nonprofit world, and I particularly love the nonprofit civil rights world. And but now it's time to get paid. So this is

what I want to um. Right now, on the Supreme Court, they're they're here in a case about a firmative action in college. This keeps coming up over and over again, Like why do you think you know, we're still having this battle. Yeah, it's quite interesting, you know. Uh so I'm a litigator, and and most litigators lawyers know that if you're going to take a case up to the

Supreme Court, you're bound by president. If the Supreme Court has decided that issue before and has decided it one way, it's very hard to get the Court to reverse course. It happens, but it's hard to do, and you have to really have a reason for why you think at this moment the Court should reverse course. Um. But this Court has been doing it quite a bit at a brisk clip. Um. And you know, obviously we know the Dobb's decision overturned Row versus Weight, a fifty year old decision,

and affirmative action as well. I mean, it's not as though the Court is not deciding affirmative action over and over again. This is like, you know, you just keep going to you get the court, you want UM. In nineteen seventy nine, in the Backey case, affirmative action in

college admissions was challenged and upheld. It was upheld again then in the Grutter case out of University of Michigan, then in again in the Fisher case University of Texas, and after the University of Texas lost, the man who has been behind this whole effort basically said, uh, you know, using a kind of a clue from the descent of Justices Thomas and Alito, I think I need Asian American plaintiffs.

And he said about crafting a set of of claims that UM raised conscious admissions is actually discriminatory against Asian Americans. And that's the claim that he had brought uh in in in Harvard at Harvard, and that's the case that's

now before the Supreme Court. But should the Supreme Court be hearing this again when they just heard it in and before that, just heard it in two thousand two and before that just you know, but um, it's a new court, right And so basically you have somebody who keeps coming back and now they have the court they want, Okay, but this scares me about the court. Though the Court we have now right, I mean, it's the Supreme Court

has really been our only recourse for justice. I mean pretty much everything that we've gotten as far as rights right has been based a decision from the Supreme Court. Now everything, like like you said, has been overturned. What

do we do now, how do we get past this court? Well, I think actually it's a sober and sobering moment for us to recognized that although I think many of us grew up in a period of time where we believe that it's in fact not true, it is true that the Court decided Brown versus Board of Education, which ended legal apartheid in this country and really changed American democracy. And there's been many other Civil Rights Division decisions from

the Court that have been wonderful. Most of them have not been wonderful actually, um, in the history of the United States Supreme Court, and so we've always had to supplement it with legislative action with the Civil Rights Act of nineteen sixty four, with the Voting Rights Act of nineteen sixty five, with the Fair Housing Act of nineteen

sixty eight. UM, we've had to supplement it with direct action with protests, with Boycott's We've had to supplement it with education, We've had to supplement it in all kinds of ways, and so it's always been a multi pronged strategy. The problem we have now, though, is that the Court seems been on dismantling the successes we make in those other realms. And so we see that with, for example, the Voting Rights Act, which has been severely weakened, you know,

by this Supreme Court. That's where we have to really start to get worried, and it is a real problem. Um. It is not something to be taken lightly. And it's not just a partisan battle, as many people think. I've been a civil rights lawyer for thirty years. You win someone, you lose some. The rule of law is that you abide by what the court says and does. But you do that with the knowledge that the Court is behaving

fairly and with integrity and legitimately. And when you start feeling like um decisions are being made without the proper foundation, then it gets very hard to convince your clients that it's a fair system. And so I think we are in a kind of perilous moment um as it relates to the Court. Before you go, you said something I want to get to, um that you said, our democracy, we're it's like a teenage We're teenagers, just are We're young. It's like teenagers. So what democracy is staying up all

night on Snapchat and what's up there? You know? I mean, yes, like teenagers who think they know everything, who have a grandiose sense of themselves, who throw tantrums. Yes we we are.

I mean, if you think about American democracy, at least for me, I wouldn't count America as a democracy as certainly as a nation, but not as a democracy until at least nineteen fifty four, when Brown was decided, Because you can't call a country a democracy if um, by law, If by law, a whole segment of citizens can be denied the right to participate in the political system. So that's just, and that's being pretty generous. That's nineteen fifty four.

I would take it to nineteen sixty five with the Voting Rights Act because before the passage, Before the passage of the Voting Rights Act, even though the right of black people should have been guaranteed by the fourteenth and fifteenth amendments to the Constitution enacted, enacted and ratified after the Civil War. Most black people then lived in the South and still live in the South, and most of

the South was denying the vote to black people. So until nineteen sixty five, I wouldn't call us even credibly a democracy. And if you think of it that way, then we are young. And so we're still agreeing this thing out and I'd say, wanted just to give people hope. Please give me something and give surely give me some boat. We're also trying to do something that no other country has done. There is no template for the kind of multi racial democracy with the kind of history of white

supremacy and slavery. There's no other country that's trying to do that in the dynamic way that we are doing it. Um. We talk about, you know, being a nation of immigrants, which is not entirely true, but immigration is a huge part of the character of our country, and twentieth century immigration for sure made the country have the cast that it does. And so we're trying to create something. We're not trying to do something like another country. We're not

pointing to them and saying, oh, yeah, I like that. Um, We're trying to do something very particular, and it's hard, and that's what I'm currently writing a book about. It's called Is This America? And um, it is about race, but it is also about what I think of at this moment as the last best chance for us to really create a healthy democracy in this country. Okay, well, when you finished a book, I won't be here, but I'm sure bring it back and there'll be a nice

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