A Chicago police officer has filed suit against the University of Illinois alleging the institution discriminated against him because he is a white man, according to Newsweek.

According to 23-year veteran Lt. John Cannon’s suit, the university’s Chicago School of Law damaged his reputation, in turn limiting his career opportunities, after he clapped back at an email sent to students from Darby Dickerson, the former dean, regarding the death of George Floyd. He said that the email tied police officers to “white supremacy.”

“I was offended to a degree that is hard to articulate. I come from a long line of honorable police officers,” he told FOX32.

The police vet said he asked not to be sent more messages, but an associate dean replied that he could “withdraw from the law school or drop out of classes” if he wanted.

Cannon then said the situation got worse after another law student hacked into his Facebook page and reposted some conservative memes onto Twitter with additional comments.

“He [the fellow student] included fake captions on them and then shared them to Twitter pages all over the city, including the mayor, the superintendent of police,” Cannon told the local outlet.

Newsweek adds:

The lieutenant said the event has damaged his career prospects and that he is now being disciplined by his police department and is currently under investigation by the Civilian Office of Police Accountability (COPA).

“There’s been a lot of damage to me. One of the reasons I went to law school was because I wanted to further my career. I want to advance, either on the police department or elsewhere,” Cannon said.

Cannon’s attorney, Dan Herbert added: “One of our biggest goals here, the law school has to recognize that this type of behavior is so inappropriate, especially for a law school.

“It’s so inappropriate and I just hope the school recognizes that and takes action to make sure this doesn’t happen again,” Herbert noted further.

On its website, the UIC Office of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion stated it “promotes an institutional culture of respect and empathy for all members of the law school community by fostering thought, dialogue, and active engagement around diversity, equity, and inclusion.”

In many cases, however, when dealing with institutions run by far-left administrators, ‘inclusion’ and ‘equity’ and ‘diversity’ tend to mean everyone who isn’t a white male.

Cannon’s lawsuit comes as the U.S. Supreme Court is taking up a case involving a lawsuit against the use of race as an admission standard.

According to an ABC News ‘explainer’ in late January:

[The Court said] it would consider a pair of lawsuits alleging that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina discriminate against Asian American applicants. The practice has been reviewed by the court several times over the past 40 years and has generally been upheld, but with limits. …

Most colleges don’t disclose whether they consider race, but the practice is believed to be limited to a small fraction of schools. Some estimates put it at a few hundred of the nation’s 6,000 colleges, mostly at more selective colleges.

Most states allow affirmative action but nine have outlawed it, including California, Florida and, most recently, Idaho, which banned it in 2020.

Despite the fact that the court has reviewed this practice in the past and upheld it in any fashion, by the plain letter of civil rights law it is patently illegal and unconstitutional. Let’s hope the current Supreme Court sees it that way.