Her Arkansas legislative agenda done — a bill to prevent transgender girls from joining a girls soccer team — Attorney General Leslie Rutledge can now turn attention to her favorite work, joining Republican lawsuits around the country.

She proudly announced today that she’d be among 16 states joining a Texas lawsuit by the NRA attempting to block New York’s effort to dissolve the nonprofit for its record of financial misdeeds. Understand that Rutledge is being beyond disingenuous in pitching this as somehow a defense of the 2nd Amendment in fighting for the NRA’s avoidance of New York’s action. It’s a defense of NRA corruption. It has no meaning in Arkansas.

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That’s not all Rutledge has been doing lately, though I don’t think she’s trumpeted this one yet.

She’s among 13 Republican states asking the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn an appeals court decision that found Harvard doesn’t discriminate against Asian-American students in admissions. No need to believe this group when they open their pleading as a defense of noble Asian-Americans. The group behind this, Students for Fair Admissions, is waging a war on all racial considerations in university admissions. Affirmative action? Republicans don’t like it.

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The strategy is explicitly outlined in the brief Rutledge has signed.

Ending unequal treatment of our Asian-American citizens does not diminish equal opportunity for our other racial minority communities. As further explained
below, some of Amici States have prohibited racial classifications in university admissions and yet successfully maintain diverse campuses that are inclusiveand equally open to students of any race. Harvard’s claim in this case that such diversity is impossible without engaging in racial discrimination is contradicted by the experience of our state and private universities that provide the highest quality education to all without regard to skin color or ethnicity.

It seems, by the admission, that this is not a problem in Arkansas. But there Rutledge goes again.

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UPDATE: She’s also joined a group of Republican states challenging the federal law that says federal stimulus aid must be used for stimulus, not to pay for tax cuts. She argues this prevents a state from setting its own tax laws. No, it just sets restrictions on spending of federal money.

 

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