Supreme Court ends affirmation action

According to the woke, tests are racist.

There's a reason why pretty much every college is test-optional now: they wanted to be able to admit unqualified affirmative action students (up until ~1 hour ago) while having plausible deniability.

While we can all agree in a perfect world, one would not be judged on their race and skin color based on entry into schools or places of employment. However in America we have a complete and very long history of doing just that....excluding people based on race, color and I add gender.

As for Affirmative Action, America has had ever since the first European stepped foot on this continent and assumed he was superior to the people already here and that thinking unfortunately has carried on to this very day. Only in the last 45 years or so have institutions and employers tried to consider non whites and women for admission into schools and certain jobs. Now the old white guys think 45 years is too much, as if someone took their spot. I could argue the same since 1619...as millions of white males took my ancestors spots at Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness.

Minorities and women, when given the opportunity in the same environment, perform the same as white males...but with much less prejudice and bias.

Do they? What are the demographics of students earning perfect ACT or almost perfect (let's say 1580+) SAT scores? There's likely a relatively even gender split, but the racial demographics are going to be almost exclusively Asian and white.

Good! I applaud the SCOTUS decision and the 14th Amendment foundations of the decision. This sets a precedent that will allow us to now enforce equal opportunity and access for all manner of things.

Private clubs and fraternal organizations can now be shuttered or forcibly integrated if they use race as an admissions criteria.

Eliminate the use of redlining for insurance and credit reasons.

Compel states and municipalities to equally distribute resources across all neighborhoods, school districts, health districts, parks, etc.

Force an end to racially obvious gerrymandering. Places like Alabama, Mississippi, and Louisiana will no longer be permitted to draw congressional districts that minimize or nullify the black vote. Texas and Florida cannot draw districts that disenfranchise Latinos. Voter maps will become more balanced and fair.

It will take some time for lawsuits to move through the courts but, eventually, this decision will force true equality by eliminating any currently legal and grey area means of disenfranchising minorities.

I am astounded that 3 SC justices (not really, the SC has gotten so sadly politicizied) would vote against this. Are they not supposed to rule by the US constitution? The 14th Amendment says equal protection of the laws. How can they rule against this?

'No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States; nor shall any State deprive any person of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws."

You don't hear yourself. You are telling us that whites on average are better athletes and are smarter and earn more money.

Really? This is the stand you’re going to take?

Be better.

Why are you against the government banning racial discrimination in admissions?

Your "stand" is questioning if my stand is my stand?

This is the answer, and nothing much will actually change in practice, just some extra work for the admissions officers.

Just read the dissents. They let emotion guide their hand instead of the Constitution.

Obviously I am not.

I am telling you, for example, that when you look at the totality of the sports offerings at top schools, and the athletes on the rosters, there are more white students than otherwise. White people are more likely to play tennis, golf, run cross country, be on a crew team (row), play volleyball, swim and dive, and so on.

So, when a benefit is given to athletes, it is more likely to benefit white prospects because there are more white kids playing those sports in high school and clubs.

If you’ve been involved in admissions at an institution of higher learning, which I have, you realize this decision is not nearly as foundational as you think. For better or worse the student demographics at Harvard or UNC are not going to change because of this SC ruling, they will simply use other descriptors or correlates of race to make their decisions.

From Sotomayor's dissent:

"Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgement of inequality."

"The result of today's decision is that a person's skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion [of a crime] but it may not play a role in assessing that person's individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment."

This is good. But the only people the benefit from this are Asians.

RossiCheated wrote: "So, every applicant who is a person of color can write an essay that describes how they have faced prejudice...."

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I write: Are applicants who are not "person[s] of color" also allowed to describe how they faced prejudice?

So why haven't you and your kind acted like it for 500 years?

Funny you would use a line from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr's "I Have A Dream" speech. You obviously never heard it or read it in its entirety. In the speech, Dr. Martin Luther King Jr goes off you people exactly like you!

When the architects of our republic wrote the magnificent words of the Constitution and the Declaration of Independence, they were signing a promissory note to which every American was to fall heir. This note was a promise that all men — yes, Black men as well as white men — would be guaranteed the unalienable rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

It is obvious today that America has defaulted on this promissory note insofar as her citizens of color are concerned. Instead of honoring this sacred obligation, America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked insufficient funds.

But we refuse to believe that the bank of justice is bankrupt.

We refuse to believe that there are insufficient funds in the great vaults of opportunity of this nation. And so we've come to cash this check, a check that will give us upon demand the riches of freedom and the security of justice.

We have also come to his hallowed spot to remind America of the fierce urgency of now. This is no time to engage in the luxury of cooling off or to take the tranquilizing drug of gradualism.

Now is the time to make real the promises of democracy. Now is the time to rise from the dark and desolate valley of segregation to the sunlit path of racial justice. Now is the time to lift our nation from the quick sands of racial injustice to the solid rock of brotherhood. Now is the time to make justice a reality for all of God's children.

It would be fatal for the nation to overlook the urgency of the moment. This sweltering summer of the Negro's legitimate discontent will not pass until there is an invigorating autumn of freedom and equality. 1963 is not an end, but a beginning. Those who hope that the Negro needed to blow off steam and will now be content will have a rude awakening if the nation returns to business as usual.

EXACTLY!

In the 1978 Bakke decision, the USC held that there was a compelling interest in the government maintaining a diverse student body in colleges by using race as a factor in admissions. Bakke's precedent held up several times in the USC and as recently as 2003 in Grutter v. Bollinger, the court upheld Bakke. The only caveat was Justice O'Connor's wish that affirmative action would not be necessary in 25 years time because of progress on civil rights in the US. Roberts completely sidesteps O'Connor by claiming that it has been 20 years and "there is no end in sight", which completely misses O'Connor's point. Roberts actually shoves Brown v Bd of Educ in everyone's face claiming that affirmative action violates Brown's requirement that all races have access to public education. This equates races as a factor in admission with segregationist forcing black children to go to black only schools. As much as Roberts has tried to position himself as an institutionalist, his court has now cemented itself as the steamroller of precedent and a purely political body.

In 10-15 years, Justices Thomas, Alito and Roberts will either have retired or passed on to the big courthouse in the sky. If the extreme right wing of the Republican party that emerged under Trump remains in control during that period, there will be no Republican presidents and the senate will probably be 50-50. Dems will have an opportunity to pack the court back to the left and have a 6-3 majority that will reverse everything the conservatives have done. Citizens United, Dobbs, Hobby Lobby, etc. will all get tossed. And then when conservatives finally find their way back from the brink and Trumpism and regain power, the court will re-reverse itself.

The harm here is that the founders intended action by the supreme court to force the political process into action. If the constitution was a road block to legislation, the constitution could be amended. Constitutional amendments used to be a regular, although uncommon, part of our political process. But now that the USC has given up on stare decisis, there is no reason to bother with the amendment process. You just have to wait for your turn to get a majority on the court.