People walk outside of the Supreme Court wearing masks to deal with air pollution. CBS News/Getty.
The Supreme Court has overruled affirmative action for colleges in a blockbuster ruling. CBS News. The cases alleged that Harvard and the University of North Carolina discriminated against potential students because they choose applicants based on their race, not merit. In a 6-3 and 6-2 ruling (Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself in the Harvard case) the admission standards were overturned. The majority said that the admissions standards violated the equal protection clause.
Chief Justice Roberts was quoted as saying "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." Roberts also said that students could cite their racial history as a factor in determining if they were a good applicant and that US military academies were exempt from the ruling.
My Comment:
This was a fairly big win for America today as these admissions systems were explicitly racist and discriminated against Asian and White students. It was to the point where merit mattered not at all and no matter how good you were you could get rejected if you have the wrong skin color. To do that explicitly is institutional racism and the equal protection clause means that shouldn't happen.
I personally think that affirmative action was an absolute disaster as it promoted people that had no ability to actually do the work, thus leading to lower standards and worse outcomes across society. This has been devastating for the level of competence at all levels of both commerce and government.
It also increased racism against the people that supposedly benefit. Many people ended up higher then they could have gotten naturally and were overwhelmed or failed in their positions. And the ones that would have gotten there on merit? They became resented as people thought they both hadn't earned their place and that they had taken their spots from someone that deserved it more.
I have never thought that promoting people based on their race due to real or perceived injustice made any sense whatsoever. Why on earth would you not want the best person for the job under all circumstances? I know the arguments in favor of diversity over anything else, but I think it's pretty clear that it hasn't worked out.
As for the Court itself it has to be the biggest argument for Donald Trump being a good president for Republicans. We have gotten three massive rulings that have been major priorities for the right for years and without Trump we wouldn't have gotten any of them. In addition to this case we got Dobbs v Jackson, which overturned Roe v Wade and NYSRPA v Bruen which has overturned dozens of gun laws and completely hampered the gun control movement. And now we have this case which has ended affirmative action in colleges.
The biggest winners of this has to be East Asian and Indian Asians. Though Whites were discriminated against as well, it was Asians that were getting the worst of it. Indeed, it's long been known that if people were picked based on merit instead of race they would dominate higher education more than they already do.
I do expect that many of these colleges will do everything they can to continue to discriminate against Asian and White students and it is also true that Roberts left them a loophole. Allowing students to whine about discrimination means that these colleges still have a free pass to discriminate. I do think that many of these institutions, like Harvard, will probably go too far and run afoul of this ruling and I think it's another example of how they will benefit. Some of those students will become very wealthy when they sue Harvard and other big name universities for discrimination.
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