Roberts's 6-3 decision will change university admissions and, with it, America — but his opinion also highlighted the reactionary majority's weaknesses.
The right-wing remaking of America is not only continuing, it is accelerating (and rapidly so). This decision wasn't a shock; in fact, anyone who heard the oral argument on the case pretty much knew that this decision was inevitable. Still, it is unfathomable to me how in the past few years, the Supreme Court has effectively either remade or disposed of decades of legal precedent to give the Republicans just about everything of which they have dreamed (the one exception of course being the decision on the Voting Rights Act).
<s> Oh wow! Yet ANOTHER lost Miracle forgotten by the Army, the Navy, Air Force, Marines, NASA, Space Force, and The Pentaverate. Thankfully, my home and land, a former nuclear missile silo, PURCHASED at auction for less than PENNIES on the dollar, AND includes fully functioning hydroponics labs!!!!!! We're expecting our first harvest of chicken wings to be ready in the next month in hydroponics lab number one. Hydroponics lab two’s crop of Sirloin Steaks looks amazing. My second wife, Jezabelle, my fifth cousin, joined me on the homestead this week along with my third wife, my second cousin, Magdalene, and my fourth wife, Keren-Happuch, my third cousin twice removed, on my father’s side. </s>
The SFFA v Harvard ruling, overturning both the original trial verdict - which rejected plaintiff's argument vis-à-vis "discrimination against qualified Asian-American applicants" largely because NO injured party was brought forth by plaintiff - and 1st CA affirmation of the lower court's decision was a real stretch, given that over 30% of Harvard's Class of 2027 are Asian-American. All of this appears in an excellent article appearing on the Mother Jones website, here:
Since 2014 Edward Blum and his SFFA crowd have been banging on about "discriminatory choosing of applicants" at Harvard, allegedly biased against Asian-Americans, but NEVER produced the "injured party"...at least Bakke, Fisher, et al were real people who felt discriminated against in university admissions policy, but no such person or persons were named in the Harvard suit. What a travesty and corruption of the 14th Amendment by the Court majority.
The Chief has fashioned as fine a defining away the solution as may be wished for. And it dissolves away all such pesky Fourteenth Amendment impediments to restoring a Federalist society, such as existed in the age of our Edenic innocence. The jurisprudence of strict scrutiny has been overturned. From being very difficult to pass, the new doctrine makes the test impossible to fail. There can be no scrutinizing the inscrutable. The new and improved framework of judicial review is now a simple binary. For any state action that the majority approves, that friend of the police power, minimum rationality, applies. Otherwise, for any action that the majority disapproves, intermediate or strict scrutiny can be applied to find the measure unconstitutional on the grounds of inscrutability. Deus ex machina indeed.
The irony in citing the 14th Amendment and its "due process" clause is that the original intent of the Amendment was to grant full citizenship to former slaves and their descendants, a "race-conscious" and NON-"colourblind" Constitutional protection for a particular racial group, but against whom race-based discrimination continues even today, despite the majority's wishing it away..
“ Under the old rules, race could be considered in service of the goal of creating a racially diverse student body in order to promote better education through exposure to different kinds of people. Under the new rules, race can be considered in the context of how it affected a particular applicant’s life, and how those effects reflect on the person’s character and unique abilities:
For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.
At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
[…]
“ The court decided that the way Harvard and UNC were handling Asian applicants does violate the constitution, but also clarified that race-conscious admissions are still permissible so long as they are done in a certain way.
The new rules for race-conscious admissions actually seem more in line with the left-wing rationales for affirmative action. Those rationales are focused on the ways in which past and present racial oppression has affected people’s lives, necessitating a race-conscious remedy in the form of affirmative action. This is more or less what Roberts is instructing schools to do, i.e. not pursue a particular racial balance for educational benefits, but to consider the effect race has had on an individual’s life as part of calculating whether they merit admission.
Indeed, the new rules actually seem like they could make it even easier for schools to discriminate against Asian applicants in the way that the plaintiffs complained about. Admissions officers could simply decide, quietly of course, that the difficult racial experiences of black, Latino, and native applicants are more revealing of an underlying character and ability that merits admissions than the racial experiences of Asian and white applicants, which are perhaps not as difficult.
In its statement responding to the judgment, Harvard University made it fairly clear that it is still going to engage in race-conscious admissions along the lines prescribed by the court’s decision:
Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.
One possible downside to this decision is that applicants hoping to get some kind of racial preference will have to include a detailed story about how their race affected their life. Many students already do this in personal essays as part of their application package, but going forward, this will become effectively mandatory as it will be the only way to make oneself eligible for a racial preference. Individuals who fail to include these details in their personal statements, either due to being unaware of the new rules of race-conscious admissions or due to simply not wanting to, risk being passed up by other members of their racial group who do include them in their personal statements.
Nonetheless, the overall thrust of the decision is that race-conscious admissions are here to stay.”
The right-wing remaking of America is not only continuing, it is accelerating (and rapidly so). This decision wasn't a shock; in fact, anyone who heard the oral argument on the case pretty much knew that this decision was inevitable. Still, it is unfathomable to me how in the past few years, the Supreme Court has effectively either remade or disposed of decades of legal precedent to give the Republicans just about everything of which they have dreamed (the one exception of course being the decision on the Voting Rights Act).
<s> Oh wow! Yet ANOTHER lost Miracle forgotten by the Army, the Navy, Air Force, Marines, NASA, Space Force, and The Pentaverate. Thankfully, my home and land, a former nuclear missile silo, PURCHASED at auction for less than PENNIES on the dollar, AND includes fully functioning hydroponics labs!!!!!! We're expecting our first harvest of chicken wings to be ready in the next month in hydroponics lab number one. Hydroponics lab two’s crop of Sirloin Steaks looks amazing. My second wife, Jezabelle, my fifth cousin, joined me on the homestead this week along with my third wife, my second cousin, Magdalene, and my fourth wife, Keren-Happuch, my third cousin twice removed, on my father’s side. </s>
The SFFA v Harvard ruling, overturning both the original trial verdict - which rejected plaintiff's argument vis-à-vis "discrimination against qualified Asian-American applicants" largely because NO injured party was brought forth by plaintiff - and 1st CA affirmation of the lower court's decision was a real stretch, given that over 30% of Harvard's Class of 2027 are Asian-American. All of this appears in an excellent article appearing on the Mother Jones website, here:
https://www.motherjones.com/politics/2023/06/supreme-court-strikes-down-universities-affirmative-action/?utm_source=mj-newsletters&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=daily-newsletter-06-29-2023.
Since 2014 Edward Blum and his SFFA crowd have been banging on about "discriminatory choosing of applicants" at Harvard, allegedly biased against Asian-Americans, but NEVER produced the "injured party"...at least Bakke, Fisher, et al were real people who felt discriminated against in university admissions policy, but no such person or persons were named in the Harvard suit. What a travesty and corruption of the 14th Amendment by the Court majority.
The Chief has fashioned as fine a defining away the solution as may be wished for. And it dissolves away all such pesky Fourteenth Amendment impediments to restoring a Federalist society, such as existed in the age of our Edenic innocence. The jurisprudence of strict scrutiny has been overturned. From being very difficult to pass, the new doctrine makes the test impossible to fail. There can be no scrutinizing the inscrutable. The new and improved framework of judicial review is now a simple binary. For any state action that the majority approves, that friend of the police power, minimum rationality, applies. Otherwise, for any action that the majority disapproves, intermediate or strict scrutiny can be applied to find the measure unconstitutional on the grounds of inscrutability. Deus ex machina indeed.
The irony in citing the 14th Amendment and its "due process" clause is that the original intent of the Amendment was to grant full citizenship to former slaves and their descendants, a "race-conscious" and NON-"colourblind" Constitutional protection for a particular racial group, but against whom race-based discrimination continues even today, despite the majority's wishing it away..
What about the argument made here: https://jacobin.com/2023/06/supreme-court-affirmative-action-race-college-admissions-bias-diversity:
“ Under the old rules, race could be considered in service of the goal of creating a racially diverse student body in order to promote better education through exposure to different kinds of people. Under the new rules, race can be considered in the context of how it affected a particular applicant’s life, and how those effects reflect on the person’s character and unique abilities:
For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.
At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
[…]
“ The court decided that the way Harvard and UNC were handling Asian applicants does violate the constitution, but also clarified that race-conscious admissions are still permissible so long as they are done in a certain way.
The new rules for race-conscious admissions actually seem more in line with the left-wing rationales for affirmative action. Those rationales are focused on the ways in which past and present racial oppression has affected people’s lives, necessitating a race-conscious remedy in the form of affirmative action. This is more or less what Roberts is instructing schools to do, i.e. not pursue a particular racial balance for educational benefits, but to consider the effect race has had on an individual’s life as part of calculating whether they merit admission.
Indeed, the new rules actually seem like they could make it even easier for schools to discriminate against Asian applicants in the way that the plaintiffs complained about. Admissions officers could simply decide, quietly of course, that the difficult racial experiences of black, Latino, and native applicants are more revealing of an underlying character and ability that merits admissions than the racial experiences of Asian and white applicants, which are perhaps not as difficult.
In its statement responding to the judgment, Harvard University made it fairly clear that it is still going to engage in race-conscious admissions along the lines prescribed by the court’s decision:
Today, the Supreme Court delivered its decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. The Court held that Harvard College’s admissions system does not comply with the principles of the equal protection clause embodied in Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The Court also ruled that colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” We will certainly comply with the Court’s decision.
One possible downside to this decision is that applicants hoping to get some kind of racial preference will have to include a detailed story about how their race affected their life. Many students already do this in personal essays as part of their application package, but going forward, this will become effectively mandatory as it will be the only way to make oneself eligible for a racial preference. Individuals who fail to include these details in their personal statements, either due to being unaware of the new rules of race-conscious admissions or due to simply not wanting to, risk being passed up by other members of their racial group who do include them in their personal statements.
Nonetheless, the overall thrust of the decision is that race-conscious admissions are here to stay.”
DeSantis in Florida. Wait for it.😪
Chris, If you have time, I'd be interested in your thoughts about Asha Rangappa's response as an Admissions Officer.
Does this open the door to challenging legacy admissions based on the Rice v Cayetano language about ancestry used in the decision ?