Posted by Eugene Volokh:
Employer Recruiting of "People of Color":
http://volokh.com/archives/archive_2007_01_07-2007_01_13.shtml#1168550838
The [1]New York Civil Liberties Union is condemning an employer for
taking extra efforts to specifically recruit "people of color." Oh,
wait, the employer is the military -- that explains it; I guess they
should be scrupulously color-blind in their recruiting (though the
NYCLU's allies in supporting affirmative action have long pointed to
the military's use of race as an affirmative action success story),
even though other employers should indeed specifically recruit
non-whites.
The story also reports:
Eleni Angelos Healey, a senior at Trinity School in Manhattan and
one of the plaintiffs in the suit, said she had been harassed by
letters and e-mail from military recruiters. Her repeated efforts
to stop them had failed, she said.
�I�m really glad,� Ms. Healey said, �that there�s going to be a
much easier way for kids to get their names off these lists as soon
as possible.�
Well, I certainly don't support spam, and if someone asks to be off a
mailing list -- including the military's mailing list -- their request
should be honored. But it doesn't strike me as a terribly serious
civil liberties violation.
(The NYCLU has also apparently been complaining about the military's
use of its recruiting database, and the story reports that the Defense
Department settled the NYCLU's lawsuit by "agree[ing] to use the
database only for recruiting, giving up the possibility of sharing it
with law enforcement and intelligence agencies." I assume that the
basis of the lawsuit was some statutory objection to the use of the
database -- there are no constitutional that I know of -- objections
to the use of such a database -- but I don't know the statutory scheme
governing the question and thus have no opinion on the subject.)
References
1.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/10/washington/10recruit.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
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