
Expertise
Affirmative Action
Biography
Professor Kimberly West-Faulcon teaches Constitutional Law I, Constitutional Law II, Intelligence, Testing and the Law and Employment Discrimination Law. She researches the legal implications of theories of intelligence and fair and proper use of standardized tests, anti-discrimination and constitutional law. Her work seeks to expose the theoretical and legal implications of modern research from the fields of psychology, statistics and psychometrics and bridge science and law to offer new insights into the study of intelligence. Her academic articles, which have been the subject of scholarly responses, news articles and opinion commentary, appear in highly regarded law journals, including the Journal of Constitutional Law, University of Pennsylvania Law Review, UCLA Law Review, Wake Forest Law Review and the Yale Law Journal.
Professor West-Faulcon graduated from Yale Law School where she was a senior editor of the Yale Law Journal. After law school, she clerked for the Honorable Stephen R. Reinhardt on the Ninth Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals and was one of twenty-five law students selected annually from across the nation by the law firm Skadden, Arps, Slate, Meagher & Flom, LLP to pursue a social justice legal project in the organization of her choice. Beginning as a Skadden Fellow in the New York office of the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc (“LDF”) in 1996, she went on to direct the Los Angeles office of the LDF from 1998 until 2005 as Western Regional Counsel and Director. Professor West-Faulcon obtained her undergraduate degree Phi Beta Kappa from Duke University, where she graduated summa cum laude, receiving numerous academic honors including the Duke University Faculty Scholar Award and the University Rankin Award for Constitutional Law. While an undergraduate, she studied the Political Economy and Economic History of Great Britain at Oxford University in Oxford, England.
Professor West-Faulcon’s scholarship and teaching are grounded in her cutting edge career as a civil rights attorney and litigator, where her work focused on the legal standard for proper use of standardized tests in elementary, secondary and higher education. Her cases include representation of African-American, Latino and Caucasian elementary and high school students in a legal challenge to a high stakes testing policy in Johnston County, North Carolina and African-American and Latino students asserting their interest in the test-based admissions policy of selective examination high schools in Boston, Massachusetts. On the higher education level, Professor West-Faulcon sued UC Berkeley for discrimination in admissions on behalf of African-American, Latino and Filipino students after the elimination of race-based affirmative action on the theory that the institution’s overreliance on the SAT violated the U.S. Constitution and federal civil rights law. In addition to these testing-related education cases, she also litigated employment discrimination issues. Professor West-Faulcon challenged discriminatory hiring and promotional practices as lead counsel for the African-American plaintiff classes in a successful multi-million dollar lawsuit against the clothing retailer Abercrombie & Fitch and represented African-American police officers in enforcement of the terms of a consent decree addressing race discrimination claims by African-American, Latino and Asian-American police officers challenging the promotion practices of the Los Angeles Police Department.
Featured in a 2011 exhibit at the Simon Wiesenthal Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles as a “Southern California Freedom’s Sister,” Professor West-Faulcon’s significant accomplishments have also been praised in the company of other successful lawyers and professionals. In addition to her selection as a “Southern California Super Lawyer” in 2004, 2005, and 2006 and a “Rising Star Lawyer Under 40” in 2004 by Los Angeles Magazine, she was recognized In 1999 by the Los Angeles Daily Journal as one of the top lawyers under the age of 40 “making their mark in the legal world” and in the 1999 millennial issue of Ebony magazine as one of Ebony’s “Ten for Tomorrow” (along with Jesse Jackson, Jr., Lauryn Hill, Serena Williams, and Sean Combs) “who will almost certainly redefine their fields in the next millennium.” Professor West-Faulcon has also been featured, quoted and interviewed extensively by national media such as CNN, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, The Chronicle of Higher Education and NPR and provided legal commentary in national media publications across the nation. She is a member of the State Bar of New York and California. She has received additional bar admissions from the United States District Courts: Southern District of New York, Central District of California, Northern District of California and United States Courts of Appeal: First Circuit and Ninth Circuit.
* Although established by the NAACP, the LDF has been a separate and independent entity since 1940. LDF’s founder and first Director-Counsel was the late Supreme Court Justice Thurgood Marshall.
Supreme Court Litigation Spotlight
Professor West-Faulcon solo-authored a Supreme Court amicus brief in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin.
The brief challenges the “mean test score fallacy” underlying the claim that differences in racial group average scores constitute proof of race discrimination against whites.
Courses Taught
- Advanced Topics in Constitutional LawOriginalism
- Second Amendment, Equal Protection, and Religion
- Abortion, Race, Sex, and Gender Identity
- Constitutional Law
- Constitutional Law I: Structure
- Constitutional Law II: Rights & Liberties
- Intelligence, Testing, and the Law
- Principles of Social Justice
- Employment Discrimination Law
Publications, Research and Related Material
Links
Education
- BA, summa cum laude, Duke University, Phi Beta Kappa
- JD, Yale Law School
Supreme Court Amicus Briefs
- Brief Amicus Curiae of Kimberly West-Faulcon in Support of Respondents, Abgail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas, et al., No. 14-981, in the Supreme Court of the United States (Nov. 2, 2015).
- Brief Amicus Curiae of Professor Kimberly West-Faulcon in Support of Respondents, Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas, et al., No. 11-345, in the Supreme Court Briefs of the United States (Aug. 13 2012).
Selected Scholarship
- “Reversed Protection: A Discrimination Claim Gone Wild in Fisher v. Texas,” 6 UC Irvine L. Rev. __ (2017).
- “Obscuring Asian Penalty with Illusions of Black Bonus,” 64 UCLA L. Rev. Disc. 592 (2017).
- “Liberty to Subordinate?,” 99 Iowa L. Rev. Bull. 153 (2014).
- “Forsaking Claims of Merit: The Advance of Race-Blindness Entitlement in Fisher v. Texas,” 29 Civil Rights Litigation Handbook 335 (Steven Saltzman ed. 2013).
- “Fairness Feuds: Competing Conceptions of Title VII Discriminatory Testing,” 46 Wake Forest L. Rev. 1035 (2011).
- “More Intelligent Design: Testing Measures of Merit,” 13 U. Pa. J. Const. L. 1235 (2011).
- “Reading Ricci: Whitening Discrimination, Racing Test Fairness,” (with Cheryl I. Harris), 58 UCLA L. Rev. 73 (2010). reprinted in 27 Civil Rights Litigation and Attorney Fees Annual Handbook 291 (Steven Saltzman, ed. 2011).
- “Testing the Master Tools,” 158 U. Pa. L. Rev. PENNumbra 305 (2010).
- “The River Runs Dry: When Title VI Trumps State Anti-Affirmative Action Laws,” 157 U. Pa. L. Rev. 1075 (2009).
- “A Desegregation Tool that Backfired: Magnet Schools and Classroom Segregation,”103 Yale Law Journal 2567 (1994).
- AIDS and the Anti-Gay Crusade,” 9 Duke Journal of Politics 75 (Spring 1991).
Other Publications
- “Randolph County: A Game of Discovery,” Center for Computer-Assisted Legal Instruction (CCALI), Copyright 2003 (civil procedure instructional computer game) (with Owen M. Fiss and Ronald F. Wright).
Commentaries
- Surprisingly, Facts Rule the Day in Fisher II, Scotus Blog, June 24, 2016.
- Playing the Class Card in Racial Affirmative Action Cases, American Constitution Society Blog, Dec. 23, 2015.
- The Story Behind Justice Scalia’s “Slower-Track” Comments, Huffington Post Blog, Dec. 15, 2015.
- Why Abigail Fisher’s Lawsuit is a Modern Day Trojan Horse, The Griot, Dec. 9, 2015.
- “The Real Cheating Scandal of Standardized Tests,” Miller-McCune, August 22, 2011.
- “Reverse or Rehearsed Discrimination in College Admissions,” Los Angeles Daily News, June 29, 2009.
- “Weighing in on Test Score Equality,” Los Angeles Daily Journal, May 13, 2009.
- “Ricci v. DeStefano: A test on race,” Los Angeles Times, April 24, 2009.
- “Looking Beyond the Numbers,” Los Angeles Daily Journal, Nov. 4, 2003.
- “Stop Playing the SAT Numbers Game,” Philadelphia Tribune, May 8, 2001 (with Elaine R. Jones).
Contact
Contact Information
Burns 330
919 Albany St.
Los Angeles, CA 90015
(o) 213.736.8172
(f) 213.380.3769