U.S. District Judge Austin Huffaker on Wednesday set a trial on the constitutionality of a racial quota on the Alabama Real Estate Appraisers Board (AREAB) for November 2025.
The Pacific Legal Foundation sued Gov. Kay Ivey in February in federal court over a requirement for two members of the AREAB to be racial minorities. A spokesperson for Ivey has said she doesn’t enforce the mandate.
Under Alabama law, AREAB is comprised of nine members, all of whom are appointed by the governor. Seven members must be real property appraisers (one from each of Alabama's congressional districts), one must be a representative of an appraisal management company, and one must be a member of the public who does not do real estate appraisal work. From its enactment in 1990, the statute creating AREAB required two of the nine board members "shall be of a minority race."
While the lawsuit only focuses on one board, it could affect other boards in Alabama with a similar racial quota as AREAB.
Pacific Legal Foundation represents the American Alliance for Equal Rights in the lawsuit. The American Alliance for Equal Rights is a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nationwide membership organization based in Austin, Texas whose mission is to challenge racial classifications and racial preferences in America, according to the lawsuit.
Huffaker denied a motion for judgment on the pleadings by the American Alliance for Equal Rights on Wednesday and scheduled a trial for November 17.
Alliance for Equal Rights 2025 Scheduling by Caleb Taylor on Scribd
“The question presented in this case is simple but consequential. For court watchers or the opinion-reading public, the result of the Alliance’s facial challenge to the Mandate seems clear-cut, at first glance anyway. Whatever Ms. Clark’s and the Alliance’s motivation for bringing this action—to remedy a true constitutional injury or to achieve some policy objective—they sought to grasp their unusual prize too soon, on nothing more than a bare-bones albeit plausible Complaint and a few pages of briefing,” Huffaker said in a filing on Wednesday. “Far more sweat and elbow grease are required to obtain facial invalidation of a duly enacted statutory clause; one, counsel speculated, that appears in over two dozen other Alabama statutes relating to public appointments. Make no mistake, the case proceeds to discovery based on a strict application of the technical Rule 12(c) legal standard; pursuit of judgment on the pleadings is a precarious business after all. Had the Alliance relied on a more robust Complaint, coupled with appropriate exhibits appended to its pleading, the case might well have been decided on the merits today. But the Court takes the pleadings as it finds them, so the Governor and Brokers Association now have the opportunity to give it their best shot at summary judgment or trial.”
American Alliance for Equal Rights by Caleb Taylor on Scribd
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