The Patriot Post® · SCOTUS Rules: A Mixed Bag for Racial Discrimination
No one is talking about it, so we will: Just as the death of state-sanctioned abortion is a permanent part of Donald Trump’s legacy, so too is the death of state-sanctioned racial discrimination.
It’s not a bad one-two punch, especially for a one-termer.
In what was perhaps the least surprising and most anticipated Supreme Court decision in, well, 370 days, the majority struck down the racially toxic euphemism known as affirmative action — at least insofar as college admissions are concerned. As the Washington Examiner editorial board writes:
In a clarion call for equal treatment under the law, the Supreme Court today wisely and eloquently rejected race-based admissions programs at Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. Finally, justly, the time has come to make education the colorblind enterprise it should always have been.
The 6-3 court majority recognized “the broad sweep of the Equal Protection Clause” of the 14th Amendment and validated the promise in Brown v. Board of Education that “the right to a public education ‘must be made available to all on equal terms.’” Moreover, wrote Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority, “as the [Brown] plaintiffs had argued, ‘no state has any authority under the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment to use race as a factor in affording educational opportunities among its citizens.’”
In a slightly less enthusiastic take, the Associated Press lamented another win for those darned right-wingers: “The decision, like last year’s momentous abortion ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, marked the realization of a long-sought conservative legal goal, this time finding that race-conscious admissions plans violate the Constitution and a law that applies to colleges that receive federal funding, as almost all do.”
Predictably, Joe Biden’s handlers denounced the decision, ostensibly framing it as a usurpation of the right of colleges and universities to discriminate based on race: “For decades, the Supreme Court recognized a college’s freedom to decide how to build a diverse student body and provide opportunity. Today, the Court walked away from precedent, effectively ending affirmative action in higher education. I strongly disagree with this decision.”
Further, Biden took a disgraceful swipe at the High Court, which is the only thing that protects our Constitution from the depredations of the Democrats. After he finished his prepared remarks, a reporter asked Biden a loaded question about whether the Supreme Court was a “rogue court.”
“This is not a normal court,” said our abnormal president.
Joe Biden, like most Democrats, simply can’t see the corrosiveness of racial discrimination — both in how it embitters its victims and stigmatizes its recipients. Chief Justice Roberts, though, who famously said 16 years ago, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” has had about enough of it. Yesterday he put it this way:
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.
But in an odd and discouraging exception, the High Court said our nation’s military academies were exempt from the historic ruling — meaning that West Point, Annapolis, and the Air Force Academy can still use “diversity” as an excuse to discriminate on the basis of race. As The Wall Street Journal reports:
In a footnote within the ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote the majority opinion, cited the “potentially distinct interests that military academies may present” when it comes to using race-conscious admissions as reason why “no military academy is a party to these cases.”
What the heck?
To give us a sense of just how race-obsessed our service academies are, they keep a down-to-the-numbers accounting. As the Journal continues: “According to the United States Naval Academy, of the 1,184 midshipmen that make up the Class of 2026, 108 are Black, 117 are Asian and 180 are Hispanic. At the U.S. Military Academy in West Point, N.Y., 12% of cadets are Black, 10% are Hispanic and 8% are Asian. At the U.S. Air Force Academy, 13.8% of cadets joining the Class of 2026 are Black, 19.8% are Asian, and 16.7% are Hispanic.”
So when Roberts said, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” he meant except for the most patriotic among us: those who volunteer to defend our nation.
As Colorado Democrat Congressman Jason Crow, himself a former Army Ranger, said: “This decision is deeply upsetting but outright grotesque for exempting military academies. The court is saying diversity shouldn’t matter, EXCEPT when deciding who can fight and die for our country — reinforcing the notion that these communities can sacrifice for America but not be full participants in every other way. Justice Jackson is right: ‘deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.’”
Ethan Blevins, an attorney at Pacific Legal Foundation, concurs that the Court’s obsession with “diversity,” a stubborn remnant from its 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision, muddies this otherwise right-minded ruling: “While this is a key win for individual rights, the court did not go far enough. The court should have held that race can play no role in university admissions whatsoever. Instead, the court has opted to prop up a feeble precedent that leaves the door ajar for ongoing discrimination.”
But while we can shake our heads in disgust at this exception, this bizarre blight on what should’ve been an unequivocally glorious day, we can also feel good — great, even — for the Supreme Court’s longest-serving member and, along with Justice Samuel Alito, its most rock-ribbed conservative: Clarence Thomas.
Thomas declared that the universities’ “rudderless, race-based preferences … fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our Nation’s equality ideal.” He concluded: “While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.”
South Carolina Senator Tim Scott, too, had some strong words for the concept of affirmative discrimination. Responding to Barack Obama’s claim that his “heart breaks” for the young people “wondering what their future holds,” Scott said this: “Sending the message that somehow the color of your skin means that you will not be able to achieve your goals from an educational perspective, from an income perspective or family formation, that is a lie from the pit of hell. We will not be judged solely by the color of our skin. That’s what the ruling said today.”
The editors of the Wall Street Journal editorial page could barely contain themselves: “The Supreme Court had one of its finest hours on Thursday as it reaffirmed, in logical but forceful fashion, the bedrock American principle of equality under the law. In barring the use of race in college admissions, a six-Justice majority took a giant step back from the racial Balkanization that risks becoming set in institutional stone.”
We’re not so sure. Yes, the Court finally came out fully and forcefully against race-based discrimination, and for that we’re grateful. But we’d be foolish to think that these leftist universities are simply going to honor the Rule of Law and cease their discriminatory admissions practices. Instead, we’d bet our bottom dollar that university presidents across the country have already met with their senior diversity and admissions officers to map out an end-run around this right-wing outrage.
Time will tell. But yesterday was a good day for the Constitution and a bad day, on balance, for the vile concept of racial discrimination.
Correction: Jason Crow is a Democrat, not a Republican as previously stated.