That notorious right-wing hate group, the U.S. Census Bureau, has been sued for “systematically discriminating against minorities in its 2010 census hiring campaign,” according to a short article in the Wall Street Journal today. The problem is that the bureau won’t hire those with prior convictions or pending charges in certain categories, and thus requires applicants to provide court documents related to past arrests. This has a disparate impact on “blacks, Hispanics and Native Americans,” discouraging them from applying for jobs even though they may not have been convicted (the lawsuit also thinks that some convictions are too minor to justify not being hired).
For a change, this dubious lawsuit has not been brought by the Justice Department, which has not yet gotten around to suing other federal agencies, but by seven “public-interest organizations.”