Supreme Court Guts Affirmative Action

Plus: The justices also rule unanimously in favor of a Christian postal worker.

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Happy Friday! The band Fall Out Boy released a cover of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start the Fire” with lyrics updated for the present. Any list that includes Spongebob alongside Kim Jong Un is bound to be controversial, but we approve—they made sure to mention the Cubs’ World Series win.

Quick Hits: Today’s Top Stories

  • Federal Reserve Chair Jerome Powell suggested Thursday back-to-back rate hikes were possible at future Fed meetings after the central bankers declined to raise interest rates in June. “A strong majority of  committee participants expect that it will be appropriate to raise interest rates two or more times by the end of the year,” he said at an event in Spain. On Wednesday, the Fed released the results of its annual bank stress test, which simulates recession scenarios to assess the resilience of financial institutions with more than $250 billion in assets. All 23 banks included in the exercise passed, but midsized lenders—like the failed Silicon Valley Bank and Signature Bank—weren’t evaluated.
  • The Wall Street Journal reported Wednesday the Chinese spy balloon that crossed the United States in February used commercially available, U.S.-made technology to surveil Americans. U.S. intelligence agencies have analyzed the debris from the balloon—shot down off the coast of South Carolina—and determined the craft was in fact used for spying, noting the presence of more specialized Chinese equipment in addition to the American tech. It’s unclear whether the balloon was able to transmit information back to China.
  • Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu told the Wall Street Journal Thursday he will drop the piece of his controversial judicial reform agenda that would have empowered the Israeli parliament to overturn Supreme Court decisions. The original judicial reform plan sparked widespread protests and international criticism earlier this year, prompting Netanyahu to pause the effort. The prime minister plans to now move forward with the revised legislation.
  • Former Vice President Mike Pence made a surprise visit to Ukraine on Thursday, becoming the first GOP presidential candidate to meet with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky since joining the race. Pence visited several Ukrainian cities, including Bucha, the site of significant civilian deaths at the hands of the Russian army.
  • Canada’s wildfire season—which has seen 20 million acres of land burned in roughly 3,000 fires since the beginning of the year and blanketed U.S. and Canadian cities in a smoky haze—is officially the worst on record. There are currently 483 wildfires burning across Canada, 250 of which are considered out of control. The previous record was set in 1989 with a far larger number of blazes but of much smaller size than this season’s fires. 
  • Hunter Biden settled his Arkansas child support case, according to a court filing released Thursday. The president’s son was ordered in 2020 to pay $20,000 a month in child support for a daughter he initially denied was his, but he reopened the case in an effort to reduce the payments. The filing redacted how much Biden will now pay, but his daughter will receive some of his paintings as part of the agreement.
  • A Florida jury on Thursday acquitted Scot Peterson, the former school resource officer accused of failing to intervene during the 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, that killed 17 people. The jury found him not guilty of seven counts of felony child neglect, three counts of culpable negligence, and one count of perjury.

SCOTUS Rules Against Race-Based College Admissions

Protesters for and against affirmative action demonstrate on Capitol Hill on June 29, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)
Protesters for and against affirmative action demonstrate on Capitol Hill on June 29, 2023 in Washington, DC. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The Supreme Court tends to save its most controversial rulings of the term for last, and yesterday we finally got the decision we’ve all been waiting for: Abitron Austria GmbH v. Hetronic International, Inc.

What—you’re not following the extraterritorial trademark infringement showdown of the century? Well then let’s discuss SCOTUS effectively ending affirmative action for college admissions instead.

Combining two similar cases into one, justices were tasked with determining whether the race-based admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. Writing for a 6-3 majority split along ideological lines, Chief Justice John Roberts concluded that they did, and that giving some students a race-based boost necessarily discriminates against others in the “zero-sum” world of admissions to highly selective colleges and universities.

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  1. N.J. Sparks

    Racial diversity by itself is neither meaningful nor desirable. Besides looking good on college brochures, what does it actually accomplish? Intellectual diversity, with high standards applied equally to all, is far more beneficial to education and society at large.

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    Ben Connelly

    This is a good day for America. SCOTUS is on a roll.

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    BillAZ

    QOTD It was probably a necessary development. It may be the case that less racial diversity is the outcome but I tend to think it will be marginal and temporary. And while the diversity cited by universities is desirable, it is not absolutely desirable. Capital D- (Diversity) as a value should not crowd out all other values.

    I thought Affirmative Action policy was necessary when it emerged in the 60's. The country as a whole was in a different place on race and some remedy was required to correct for it. The principle of positive discrimination to achieve a socially desirable goal seemed justifiable even though it would necessarily violate the principle of non-discrimination by definition. But we are not there anymore albeit you wouldn't know it from the howls you hear from Progressive quarters. We now seem to have reached a point where we see large pluralities of whites, blacks and Hispanics who believe that race should not be considered in college admissions - not that it should have impacted the ruling.

    Among the problems I, as well as some of the conservative justices, seem to have had with these kinds of programs and reparative policies is that they had no limiting principle. When does affirmative action become unnecessary? And there seemed to be no desire on the part of pro-affirmative action forces to fashion one beyond some fuzzy notion that effectively turns affirmative action policy into a cottage-industry. It seems perfectly appropriate then, after all these years, that admission metrics shift to class-based considerations rather than racial tests. Given that there was good evidence that these policies were serving upper-income minorities more often than the disadvantaged it is probably just as well that the Court ruled as it did.

    The Democratic and Progressive response to the ruling seems to me a bit of histrionics necessary to display their virtue on the subject to their coalition and prep another issue for the campaign or a leftish "irritable mental gesture".

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  4. Jack H Wolf

    Is it kosher to bring in another sub stack - my go to left of center very funny guy is Jeff Maurer of I Might Be Wrong - kind of a Bill Maher Dem (my go to right of center being Matt Labash)-
    This from today's sub stack with the citation below:
    "Affirmative action in universities is officially dead, and though the workarounds are obvious and probably little will change, I'm not sorry to see the policy (officially) go. It was a blunt instrument that may have made sense once, but America's increasingly complex demographics rendered it nonsensical. The young people disadvantaged by the policy did nothing wrong, and its beneficiaries were often not the people the policy was intended to help. It institutionalized a regressive and frankly deeply-fucked-up racialized worldview that made a mockery of some of our most important principles.

    And, though I try not to attack people’s motives, I need to say this one time: This was partly a system designed to make white people feel less guilty. We engineered racial outcomes that we wanted so that we could look around and say “Hooray, diversity — we did it!” But the diversity was engineered, and it took a concerted program of race-based discrimination to achieve. And that, in my opinion, caused the cons to outweigh the pros.

    I think it’s clear that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow are still present in our society. But I also think that engineering outcomes is a poor substitute for doing the hard things we need to do to expand opportunities for people who have been shut out. That’s why I support things like increasing cash payments and the Earned Income Tax Credit, changing zoning laws to give people more mobility, and trying to bring education reform back from the dead. The demise of deeply unpopular admissions policies might actually free up political capital to help bring these things about. Hopefully, we can focus on substantive solutions instead of on superficial policies that undermine our principles and harm people who did nothing wrong."

    https://imightbewrong.substack.com/p/is-it-too-soon-to-stop-punishing?utm_source=substack&utm_medium=email

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    1. Goatprairie

      "I think it’s clear that the effects of slavery and Jim Crow are still present in our society"

      It is? How so? Give some good examples.

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    Paul Hoover

    LUK: Yes, SCOTUS’s ruling on affirmative action is a good development. Concerned about the possibility of less racial diversity on some U.S. campuses? No. They’ll figure it out. Racial diversity is less important than diversity of economic and social factors, and at some point the big schools will figure that out.

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    Citizen60

    I have very mixed feelings about the affirmative action decision. There has been no other mechanism to date to try to level the playing field for groups historically disenfranchised to some extent or wholly. And race as a determinant when considering equally qualified applicants seems both unfair and reasonable. There are more applicants than openings, and there must be culling. Why not race? Or gender? Or hardship? If all other applicant factors are equal, something has to be used.
    And I benefited economically from affirmative action in employment, giving me the much-loved career heretofore inaccessible to women.

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    1. Goatprairie

      "And I benefited economically from affirmative action in employment, giving me the much-loved career heretofore inaccessible to women"

      Really? So no woman ever had a successful career before AA? Are you serious?

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        Citizen60

        Not in the corporate position I held. Because they hadn't been hired to do it.

        Do you honestly believe ALL the doors were open to women at all times before AA? Got a bridge to sell you if so....

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  7. Betsybowditch

    “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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote.

    The problem is that invites trauma porn. The worse the experience you describe the better your chances. Recently I read a post on nextdoor by a man with a Chinese surname who recounted nearly hitting another driver who failed to stop before trying right on red.

    The poster had his children in the car and, at the next red light, confronted the other driver who went into a "Me, so sorry" routine before laughing.

    One of his kids could write an essay describing what it was like to see their father humiliated by a member of the dominant culture who invoked a racial stereotype to dismiss his legitimate safety concerns stemming from failure to follow the law.

    In the movie, "You Hurt My Feelings," Julia Louis-Dreyfuss plays a woman who had published a memoir that didn't do as well as she hoped. This leads her to wonder, "If Dad had been physically abusive instead of just verbally abusive would it have sold better?"

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  8. Frank Lee

    Welcome back SCOTUS constitutional jurisprudence and to hell with the three radical leftist activists on the bench posing as jurists. Ironically they are all three biological females where females acquire 60% of all college degrees today.

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  9. Jim.H

    The scary thing is that all 3 liberal justices voted "for" giving more power to the Administrative state, censoring free speech, and legalized discrimination.

    What Constitution did they read?

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      Ed

      The Constitution of Feelings, I believe. :-)

      More seriously, for those who have been arguing the last few weeks that the Justices from the Right are the more ideological, it was interesting to see that the Justices of the Left were in lockstep, including on the Student Loan Forgiveness Order, which is about as clear a violation of the separation of powers that one can find. ..

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        Retired Prosecutor

        One wonders if there is any act the Biden executive branch could attempt that these three would deem unconstitutional. And upholding that student loan forgiveness order would have knocked a serious hole in Article I.

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    Ed

    LUK: I think it is excellent! Affirmative action had its place, but, due its built-in logical inconsistencies, it must be allowed to phase out. Among other things, I think it will also have the long term effect of expanding the pool of universities considered to be elite, diminishing the impact of Harvard, Yale, and Stanford, etc. If fewer white, black, and hispanic students get into the institutions now considered elite, the students denied are not going to go nowhere, they will go elsewhere, drawing attention to those other schools. Imagine if a school could brag that it routinely attracted and kept the top black and hispanic students in the nation, rather than having to be considered second class.

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