This story was originally published by the WND News Center.

The University of California, Berkeley, is being forced to turn over the details of its discriminatory hiring scheme, under a legal case brought by the Foundation for Individual Rights and Express.

The organization reports the fight is over "diversity statements" that school officials used to "weed out candidates for faculty positions."

The information is being released to FIRE more than two years after the case erupted.

"Many universities now require or invite current or prospective faculty to demonstrate their commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion — often through written statements that factor into hiring, research, evaluation, promotion, or tenure decisions," the organization explained.

But, it has been revealed, "those requirements can too easily function as ideological litmus tests and cast a pall of orthodoxy over campuses."

In fact, America's universities are overwhelmingly leftist these days, with some faculties having only a single rare Republican aboard. Some apparently have none and the percentage of conservatives on faculties is consistently minuscule.

"Berkeley is no exception," FIRE said in its report. "The university expects all new faculty hires to 'be committed to advancing diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging[.]' During the 2018-19 academic year, Berkeley’s life sciences departments launched an initiative to advance faculty diversity. As part of the initiative, applicants for full-time faculty positions were required to submit statements on their 'contributions to diversity, equity, and inclusion,' including information about their 'understanding of these topics,' 'record of activities to date,' and 'specific plans and goals for advancing equity and inclusion.'"

Those statements of belief, then, were used to eliminate candidates, and FIRE filed a public records request calling for the release of that process.

Two years later, FIRE send a demand letter threatening legal action if Berkeley didn't comply, since state law requires those records to be made "promptly available."

It then was learned, "candidates who 'discount the importance of diversity,' or who don’t feel personally responsible for advancing diversity, equity, and inclusion, received lower scores."

The five who were hired all "endorsed Berkeley's … DEI initiatives," the report said.

FIRE eventually expects to learn details of "the use of required diversity statements" in university hiring processes, it said.