Reading Room Document

Indian Racial Preferences

This memorandum addressed a disagreement between the OLC and the Interior Department regarding a 1988 OLC opinion that concluded that employment preferences for Indigenous Americans would be unconstitutional if they depended solely on "blood quantum," which would amount to an unconscious racial classification. The Interior Department sought the withdrawal of the 1988 opinion because the agency was not consulted before the opinion was issued. William Barr, then the head of OLC, advised the attorney general of his view that the opinion should not be withdrawn merely because the Interior Department was not consulted, and that reconsideration of the opinion would be appropriate only if the Interior believed that the opinion was incorrect as a matter of law.

March 19, 1990