New York City mayor Bill de Blasio wants to coerce museums and arts groups that receive city money into using hiring quotas based on race and ethnicity, according to the New York Times. But it would be illegal for employers to give into this pressure, because Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act forbids such discrimination.

Federal statute aside, it is unconstitutional for the city to engage in such pressuring. Any use of racial and ethnic classifications is “presumptively invalid” and triggers “strict scrutiny,” which can be met only if, for starters, there is a “compelling” government interest. The courts have recognized no such interest in the context here.

And no such interest is cited in the news story, just a claim by an official that hiring by skin color and national origin will lead to a “cultural sector” that “is fairer, more equitable and looks like the city it serves.” That, Justice Powell wrote many years ago, is just “discrimination for its own sake. This the Constitution forbids.”