The Justice Department is getting creative in its effort to prevent discrimination. On May 19 it announced the Civil Rights Fraud Initiative, which will use the False Claims Act, which encourages whistleblowers to come forward with evidence of illegal activity.

Universities, corporations and nonprofit organizations have established “diversity, equity and inclusion” policies that violate the plain language of civil-rights laws. These entities receive billions in federal funding by falsely certifying that they are in compliance with those laws.

Under the new initiative, federal contractors and funding recipients can be investigated and prosecuted under the False Claims Act, which was first enacted in 1863 to combat contractor fraud during the Civil War. The memo establishing the new initiative cites the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023), which declares that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” The decision confirmed that the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 almost never allow race-based favoritism, regardless of how well it is cloaked in the language of “equity and diversity.”

Despite that clear mandate, some institutions responded with evasion. A lawsuit filed by Students for Fair Admissions alleges that UCLA’s David Geffen School of Medicine still holds black and Latino applicants to lower standards than Asian ones. Corporations such as Bank of America and jurisdictions like Harris County, Texas, continue to boast about race-based “supplier diversity” goals and to award contracts preferentially based on race.

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