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UEAALDF is dedicated to fighting for educational integration and equal, quality education for all on both national and local levels. Its methods for achieving these goals include educational outreach, intervening in civil rights litigation, initiating related educational and sociological research, and organizing public rallies and mass petition campaigns to focus public attention and increase support for educational integration. The organization also conducts educational outreach programs at high schools and college campuses and sponsors bi-annual symposia on the issues of affirmative action, integration and education. UEAALDF is a non-profit, 501(C)3 organization whose work is directed by a Board made up of educators, attorneys and activists.
UEAALDF's Board of Directors and day-to-day leadership, as well as the participants in its conferences, rallies and other activities are unique in their integrated racial composition (about 60% black and other minority, 40% white), and in the prominence of women on the leadership team. UEAALDF is also remarkable for its success in organizing and providing leadership training to high school youth, who played a central role in the last civil rights movement, and yet are often overlooked as a potential pool of talented organizers. *
United for Equality and Affirmative Action Legal Defense Fund (UEAALDF)
is a tax-exempt 501(C)3 organization that was founded to direct the
efforts of the 41 black, Latino, Asian, Arab and white students and three
civil rights organizations who became co-defendants (intervenors) in the
landmark University of Michigan Law School affirmative action case,
Grutter v. Bollinger. This legal case, along with the companion case
regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate college, was reviewed
by the U.S. Supreme Court on April 1, 2003. On the day of the hearing,
United for Equality for Affirmative Action was a leading part of a
coalition of civil rights organizations who mobilized over 50,000 people
from around the country to the hearing to demonstrate our support for
affirmative action and integration. UEAALDF did not rest after its Supreme Court victory in Grutter v. Bollinger. In 2004, UEAALDF intervened in Avila v. Berkeley Unified School District and played a key role in the dismissal of a lawsuit seeking to overturn Berkeley’s historic desegregation plan. In January 2006 UEAALDF became an intervenor in American Civil Rights Foundation v. Los Angeles Unified School District, a pending case brought by Ward Connerly to eliminate the modest magnet school and permission-with-transfer desegregation programs in our nation’s largest public school district. In October 2006 UEAALDF filed an amicus brief in the Louisville and Seattle desegregation cases that are pending before the U.S. Supreme Court [click for brief - Abode PDF file]. UEAALDF has also brought a constitutional challenge to Proposal 2, the ban on affirmative action in Michigan, which, if successful, will overturn California’s Proposition 209 and Washington State’s I-200 and end the current series of attacks on affirmative action.
Our History |