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SCOTUS Strikes Devastating Blow to Color-blind Constitution
Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote the majority opinion for the 4-3 decision.
Today, the Supreme Court affirmed the University of Texas at Austin’s use of racial preferences in undergraduate admissions. Justice Kennedy authored the opinion for Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin in a 4-3 vote.
Fisher lands a devastating blow against the cause of a color-blind Constitution. It maintains the laughable exception for universities to the Constitution’s demand that the government never classify its citizens by race (the government may only resort to race to remedy past discrimination or in wartime). And it gives college administrators an undue deference to engage in social engineering to indulge their latest utopian fantasies for a just world. It all comes at the expense of the right to fair treatment of students on their merits, instead of their skin color, as demanded by the constitutional amendments enacted at the end of the Civil War.
It also shows the future at stake for the Supreme Court in this November’s election. Despite his rock-solid constitutional conservatism, Ronald Reagan made his longest-lasting mistake as President in appointing Justice Anthony Kennedy to the Supreme Court. Kennedy has now served as the critical vote to write into the Constitution the two great goals of the progressive elite — gay marriage and affirmative action. His appointment shows again the perils of appointing lower court judges with no paper record and no public position but with a wink-and-a-nod assumption that they will follow conservative jurisprudence. Kennedy might have been a conservative in his political views, but once on the Court he fell sway to the siren song of the academy and the media, which will praise him to the ends of the earth for Fisher, as it has for Obergefell. Without nominees of proven conservative constitutional principles, conservatives cannot be sure that judges will maintain their fidelity to the original understanding of the Constitution and choose to play God instead.
No doubt President Hillary Clinton would appoint Justices who not only would applaud Fisher, but seek to extend it beyond universities to K-12 schools, welfare programs, employment, voting districts, government contracts, and so on. If Clinton win this November, her appointments will wipe away the last 45 years of conservative efforts to restrain the courts and send us back to the days of the Warren Court.
Fisher also shows the narrow room for error on the part of Republicans supporting Donald Trump only on the ground that he would appoint conservatives to the Court, a claim he reiterated in his speech yesterday’s to religious leaders. Trump has earlier proposed a list of rock-ribbed judicial nominees who are virtually defined by being the anti-Kennedys. But if Trump were to stray off that list to cut a deal, as did Reagan with Kennedy in 1987-88, we can now see the harm to the Constitution that he might wreak. Unfortunately, I cannot see any way for Trump to persuade conservatives of his commitment, given his changes on policies from the minimum wage to tax to gun control.
Published in Law
I think it is truly sad that a Reagan appointee should be the justice who in essence keeps affirmative action in place.What so disturbs me is how it is that Republican appointed justices such as O conner and Kennedy become swing votes and Stevens and Souter become outright liberal justices while every Democrat appointed justice tows the liberal line on essentially every major issue!In pretty much every major case it is the same thing,we assume that the liberal bloc will vote together and the so called conservative block will debate the issue with Kennedy in the end deciding the outcome…..why is it that the Democrats are able to appoint justices who hold to the liberal line but Republicans cannot count on those they appoint?
Why do you assume Republicans oppose these outcomes?
The court allows governments to consider race in college education. However, earlier this term in Foster v. Chatman they struck down (7-1), in very strong language, a Georgia state conviction for using race as a reason for jury strikes.
This is why people have a hard time understanding the law.
Colorblindness has been proven to be a suckers game. It’s time for whites to go full-on racist again until the minorities agree that colorblindness really means colorblindness.
http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/supreme-court-justices-get-more-liberal-as-they-get-older/
This is a great question. I’d love to hear theories on why this occurs.
Just remember when you’re hiring someone, that you should assume that black candidates did not deserve the academic credentials they have been granted and you should always favor the non “minority” because they probably earned their credentials.
That’s the lesson the courts will have us learn.
But then they’ll sue you for not accepting the fraudulent credentials.
The country is done. Time for a new one.
Disagree strongly. Racism is what the liberals are actually doing – however they may dress it up – but in both the short and long run it is a rot in one’s character. I would urge you, whatever the provocation, to not permit the rot to fester and grow within.
I’ve never understood the specific legal justification for this kind of discrimination and how it doesn’t let the genie out of the bottle to allow any other kind of discrimination. In other words, if the college had discriminated in favor of a white student, even if they thought they had a good reason for doing so, we know what the outcome would have been, but what would have been the legal basis for finding against the college’s decision to discriminate? And how would that legal reasoning not invalidate what the court did today? I know it has something to do with whether the goal of the discriminatory policy is a valid state objective, but who determines that? Is there actually a law that says you can discriminate on the basis of race as long as you have a good enough reason? Or is it all just an invention of judges?
To the extent that today’s decision should have been expected from these “justices” it is not disappointing. But, it is distressing the lengths to which supposedly rigorous thinkers willingly ignore the text, context, and history of the post Civil War amendments. In that respect, yet another episode of these tortured decisions is a disappointment.
I believe that the principle that our government ought not to deliberately engage in race-based preferences is one that will be sustained over the long run. Today was a missed chance to right many future wrongs, but so long as the wrong persists the challenges will continue.
I also believe that today’s decision rests mainly in the vanity, and perhaps even some cowardice, of the author. I mean that in an understanding way as I believe we all struggle in varying degrees with these vices and others.
Perhaps we should just accept Justice O’Connor’s assertion as a rule – that there will be no further need for these morally bankrupt policies by 2028. If we just accept that, we can then be spared the hope and worry attending these cases.
Black privilege.
Until we realize, and actually allow ourselves to assert, that our country is not the most, but the least, culpable nation in connection with African slavery, in terms of duration, intensity, and sheer numbers–
this kinda crap will endure.