Asheville’s settlement of a legal fight regarding the Human Relations Commission of Asheville could set an important precedent for courts across the country as they evaluate racially informed appointments to government boards.
Asheville City Council established the HRCA in 2018 to address issues of equity in city government. Council was specifically seeking members from Black, Latino, LGBTQ, and other identity groups to provide diverse perspectives. At their Aug. 26 meeting this year, however, Council members voted to eliminate language that called for commission appointments to consider “individuals from different races, ethnicities, sexual orientation and socioeconomic backgrounds.”
The move allowed Asheville to resolve a federal lawsuit submitted by five white residents, led by former city employee and onetime Council candidate John Miall, in September 2023. The plaintiffs alleged that the city kept them from serving on the HRCA due to their race, thereby violating the Civil Rights Act and the U.S. Constitution's Equal Protection Clause.
Shortly after the lawsuit was filed, Council appointed Miall to the HRCA and removed a requirement that its membership “shall include” representatives from specific identity groups. But Andrew Quinio, an attorney for the nonprofit Pacific Legal Foundation who represented the plaintiffs pro bono, argues that simply listing specific racial categories still created implicit goals for commission appointments. The consent decree Asheville signed with the plaintiffs cuts that list entirely.
Quinio notes that his firm is handling multiple active lawsuits against government bodies in Alabama, Minnesota, Louisiana, and West Virginia over race-based board appointments, and that prospective clients have continued to reach out about similar situations. He calls the Asheville settlement “a significant victory” that will provide lawyers with an effective tool in future litigation.
“[Asheville] will certainly be referenced as an example of essentially what not to do if you are a government entity,” Quinio says. “This case will be used as an example in our other cases to affect the change that the Constitution requires.”
The consent decree does not require Asheville to admit fault, and City Attorney Brad Branham maintains that the HRCA language did not violate any legal requirements. Yet given “the level of risk and cost associated with extended litigation,” he says, agreeing to the settlement was in the city’s best interest.
Mayor Esther Manheimer offered further insight into the city’s thinking through remarks at the Aug. 26 Council meeting. Due to the “cancellation of all things DEI [diversity, equity, and inclusion]” by the Trump administration, she explained, the city was unlikely to win in federal court and could be liable for the plaintiffs’ attorney fees.
“Sometimes we have to be pragmatic in the way that we resolve things to save tax dollars, but be able to at least preserve a commission that we know is doing good work and concentrating on things that are very important to our community,” Manheimer said. “It’s an unfortunate reality that we’re having to navigate in this new regime.”
Not all Council members agreed with the mayor’s realpolitik. Kim Roney, who has filed to run against Manheimer in Asheville’s 2026 mayoral election, and Bo Hess both voted against changing the HRCA language. Roney in particular suggested that the city was acquiescing to injustice.
“Sometimes we can’t do anything, and sometimes we should do what we can, like fighting for human and civil rights and our constitutional rights,” Roney said at the August Council meeting. “That’s something that our community needs us to do.”
Hess had previously voted to approve the settlement in a July 29 closed session. He did not explain his apparent about-face at the August meeting, nor did he respond to a request for comment.
It’s unclear what immediate impact, if any, the settlement will have on city operations. HRCA Chair Alma Atkins declined to comment for this story. The commission itself hasn’t conducted any business since last September, and its meetings were moved to an as-needed basis as part of Asheville’s restructuring of citizen advisory boards.
One duty the HRCA could be tapped to tackle is advising the city on recommendations from the Community Reparations Commission, a joint city-county body established in 2020 to help local government address the legacy of systemic racism. CRC Chair Dewana Little and Vice Chair Bobbette Mays presented the group’s final report to Council on Sept. 9; in a draft of that presentation, they had named both the HRCA and the City-County African American Heritage Commission as potentially helping city staff carry out reparations work.
However, the HRCA wasn’t mentioned in the CRC’s final presentations to either county or city officials. The future of local reparations remains uncertain given recent legal threats from Trump’s Department of Justice.
