The decision of the Supreme Court to end the use of race in college admissions was not unexpected. Indeed, the rulings in cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina ended decades of muddled 5-4 decisions. Yet, President Joe Biden seemed to go into full attack mode and actually claimed that the Court gutted the constitutional guarantee that “all men and women are created equal.” In declaring that this Court was not “normal,” Biden further insisted that these admissions decisions and the Dobbs abortion decision reversed the gains that “we fought a war over in 1860” to secure.
In an interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” President Biden accused the Court of ignoring what “the Constitution says: We hold these truths to be self-evident, all men and women are created equal, endowed by their creator.” That is actually a reference to the Declaration of Independence, but it was the substance of the point that was so baffling.
In barring the use of race in admissions, the Court believed that it was protecting that very guarantee. It erased what the Court viewed as a glaring anomaly in its cases in the treatment of racial discrimination in education as opposed to employment. It was the capstone opinion for Chief Justice John Roberts who in 2017 declared: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” In 2006, Roberts added: “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
The Court was enforcing what it saw as the “self-evident” guarantee referenced in the Declaration and later protected in the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court reaffirmed that all men and women are created equal and will be treated equally in both education and employment.
The President is not alone in such hyperbole. Figures like Whoopi Goldberg actually asked whether the decision means that we are “heading to no women in colleges soon? Who knows.”
We actually do know. An opinion rejecting the use of racial classification to determine who goes to college could not be read by anyone as endorsing the exclusion of other groups.
The truly baffling statement was Biden’s claims over the Civil War. By leaving questions like abortion to the states, Biden claims that the Court was reversing what was gained in that war. The criticism came in response to an opinion insisting that there is no place for racial discrimination in higher education. That would hardly seem an argument that would be embraced by the Confederacy.
President Biden has long taken liberties with our constitutional history. Many of us have repeatedly objected to claims that he has made in areas like the Second Amendment. One of his most repeated lines is that the Second Amendment was passed with the understanding that certain guns would be banned and adding “You couldn’t buy a cannon, when in fact the Second Amendment passed.”
That happens to be utterly false. Yet, even after the Washington Post declared Biden’s understanding of the Second Amendment to be false, he has continued to make the same false assertion over and over again.
Now Biden has moved on to the Civil War and his revisionism is about as subtle as Sherman’s scorched “March to the Sea.”
The Civil War did not end federalism or states rights. It denied the right of the states to secede and ultimately fulfilled the pledge to equality first made in the Declaration of Independence.
One can have good-faith disagreements on whether the use of racial criteria is constitutional affirmative action or unconstitutional racial discrimination. However, Biden is belittling our prior struggles for equality with these sweeping and erroneous claims.
In his interview, the President also insisted that one has to “look at how it’s ruled on a number of issues that are — have been precedent for 50, 60 years sometimes, and that’s what I meant by not normal.”
In reality, the Court’s decisions on affirmative action in education have been muddled and conflicted for decades. In 1977, in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the Court barred affirmative action in higher education. However, it allowed some consideration of race as part of a holistic admissions process.
In the decades that followed, the Court remained sharply divided. By 2003, the Court was ready to issue the very decision that it issued this week. However, in Grutter v. Bollinger, then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor supplied the fifth vote to uphold the use of race by the University of Michigan. Yet, O’Connor wrote that the court “expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” That was roughly 20 years ago.
It is also ironic to hear the President bewailing the reversal of precedent since the greatest advance in racial equality was the reversal of Plessy v. Ferguson and the doctrine of “separate but equal.” That was the governing precedent from 1894 to 1954, but few denounced the Supreme Court for reversing the precedent in Brown v. Board of Education. It was a decision to eliminate different treatment on the basis for race.
This Court did indeed overturn long-standing cases but these have long been areas characterized by closely and fiercely divided 5-4 and plurality decisions.
The President also asserted that “the vast majority of the American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court is making.” The majority clearly opposed the Dobbs ruling, but that is not the case on the affirmative action ruling. Polls have consistently shown (including this week) that the majority of the public does not support the use of race in college admissions. Indeed, even in the most liberal states like California, voters have repeatedly rejected affirmative action in admissions.
We should have a robust and passionate debate over these issues. Yet, a president should be seeking to facilitate that dialogue rather than distorting and weaponizing our shared history. It is a continuation of his prior declarations that members of Congress opposing his election reforms to block state laws are voting with “Jefferson Davis” and the Confederacy. Despite the laws in states like Georgia being upheld as constitutional, Biden declared them a return to the “Jim Crow” South based on distorted accounts of those laws. The claim was again historically and legally ridiculous even if one opposed these state laws.
We should not allow the President’s constitutional and historical distortions to become, to use his description of the Court, “normal.” We have fought hard to address the scourge of slavery and racism in our country. That struggle is continuing but we cannot address those problems in the future by distorting our past.
This is a corrected version. A short version appears on Fox.com.
OT: more great outtakes from Roberts’ opinion in the landmark Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard:
“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her ex- periences as an individual—not on the basis of race.
Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
And there’s this zinger at the dissent:
“Most troubling of all is what the dissent must make these omissions to defend: a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin. While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants, it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue. In its view, this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit. Separate but equal is “inherently unequal,” said Brown. 347 U. S., at 495 (emphasis added). It depends, says the dissent.”
“Right races.” “It depends.”Ouch!! Bet that’s a fun lunchroom at SCOTUS.
Read it; read it all!
First of all, for those of us who would abolish the Dept. of Education or favor school choice, why on earth do we want the Court telling schools what to do? On this alone, the ruling is a bad one.
Second, it’s not an issue of being born equal, which I think most of us believe. It’s an issue of reasonably equal opportunity. If there is a black person more qualified than the other candidates, for sure that person should get in. If there is a white person more qualified, that person should get in.
It’s when all things are roughly equal that there is a problem that the schools do need a means to address:
Just based upon color-blind randomness, if there are 10 equally qualified candidates, maybe 2 will be black. If you pick a name out of a hat, the chances for the black person to get into the school is 20%, 1 in 5. Everyone else gets an 80% chance. The odds wouldn’t change if they were picking 5 out of the 10 candidates randomly – it’s always 80% vs. 20%! The field is just not level. The school, ideally would adjust the chances so everyone has an equal chance, maybe by adding additional chits in the hat for each black person, making the odds equal for all.
If you don’t agree that it’s always 80-20% odds, read this: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem
It’s not the same thing as saying that less qualified black persons should get in over more qualified persons of other skin colors, sex, or ethnicity.. For a long time, this was reasonable to assure that there would be well educated people of all ethnicities and sexes. Maybe it’s not so reasonable anymore – and reasonable people can differ on this.
So maybe a proper ruling would be that the schools can use race when it comes to the 80-20% problem, but not to allow lesser qualified candidates in.
Your expertise in Baysian statistic not withstanding, the issue is the admission of demonstrably less qualified students (as evidenced by clearly documented educational outcomes), not the “equally qualified 80-20% scenario” you invoke.
Paul: I had to look up “Bayesian probability.” Thanks for teaching me something I did not know.
Why do you think that 80-20% is unfair? That’s a more favorable and HIGHER statistic than the Black population/ representation in the U.S. in general/as a whole (what is it, something like 13.7%?) .
Truth be told, 86 or 87% of the U.S. population (and exponentially as well) is NOT-Black.
Sorry, I respectfully disagree. SCOTUS is right on this one.
(I should have clarified that the 86-87% comprised SEVERAL races/ethnicities other than Black, and in fact, -did I not read that Whites were only @50% of Harvard’s student population, even though whites comprise roughly 67% of the U.S. population?)
(and I add that affirmative action objectives linked to population representation/percentage is also impermissibly outside of the constitution/not a valid criterion; my point was directed toward your “80-20% problem.”
So why did the court carve out an exception for the military which can still use race as a criteria?
Now you know why univesities have dropped entrance exams…. this is going to be their ” end around” to the AA decision they saw coming
ON what grounds other than hyperbole did Kagan, Sotomayor and Brown base their idiotic decision on ? You know it was the hatred of white males and probably asians also.
You know, if you actually wanted to understand their grounds, you could read their dissents instead of pretending to read their minds.
I think the first time in over 200 years, this U.S. Supreme Court changed “Legal Standing” under Article III of the U.S. Constitution. That’s bad for Republicans also.
Now a plaintiff can use a “hypothetical” as Legal Standing (web designer case with LGBT customers). Since 1791, legal standing required real harm or constitutional injury in order to start a court case.
Now anyone can go to court using a “hypothetical” – that’s never happened before!
The Babylon Bee nails it:
WASHINGTON, D.C. — In an extremely awkward moment, six Supreme Court justices ruled that affirmative action is unconstitutional, completely forgetting that affirmative action hire Ketanji Brown Jackson was sitting right there next to them.
“Welp, this is kind of an uncomfortable situation,” said Chief Justice John Roberts after turning in his majority opinion. “No hard feelings, ok, Ketanji? We’re still invited to the cookout at your place this weekend, right?”
Roberts then slunk away with an embarrassed look on his face.
“Today is a sad day for anyone who was hired strictly based on their race, gender, and sexual orientation rather than qualifications,” said White House Press Secretary Karine Jean-Pierre, who was hired strictly based on her race, gender, and sexual orientation rather than qualifications. “Ah, crap… now this is awkward.”
Vice President Kamala Harris, also an identity hire with no qualifications, weighed in as well, saying: “Affirmative action is affirmative, and that’s good. Without affirmative action, we will have non-affirmative action which is the worst kind of action. And that’s bad. HA HA HAHAHAHAHA!”
At publishing time, Clarence Thomas had distracted himself from his awkward feeling by writing yet another brilliant opinion.
https://babylonbee.com/news/awkward-supreme-court-rules-against-affirmative-action-with-affirmative-action-hire-standing-right-there
Awesome!
In an extremely awkward moment, six Supreme Court justices ruled that affirmative action is unconstitutional, completely forgetting that affirmative action hire Ketanji Brown Jackson was sitting right there next to them
Ketanji Jackson is a privileged black womyn who does not reflect in the slightest any minority group in America. Cue Gerald Ferraro’s comment on Barack Obama, the
blackwhite grifter politicoPer Wiki:
Early life and education[edit]
Jackson was born on September 14, 1970, in Washington, D.C.,[7][8] to parents who had been educated at historically black colleges and universities.[9][10][11] Her father, Johnny Brown, attended the University of Miami School of Law and ultimately became the chief attorney for the Miami-Dade County School Board; her mother, Ellery, would serve as the school principal at New World School of the Arts in Miami, Florida. …Jackson grew up in Miami, Florida, and attended Miami Palmetto Senior High School.
In the 1970s-2000, Palmetto HS, which is in Pinecrest region of South Miami Dade County, was an historically rich white folks area. This is where Jackson lived as a privileged girl (NB: though since she is not a biologist she likely would not know if she was a girl). Jackson, in those privileged day, was no where near the black riot zones of Miami, which were Liberty City, Overtown, Northside, and Allapattah areas of Miami where most impoverishes blacks lived. The percentage of blacks of Pinecrest in the year 2000, per Wiki link below, were 2%, whereas in Miami Dade County, blacks accounted for 19%, and in Florida, 16%. Her life was one of pure privilege:
In 2000, the median income for a household in the village was $105,557, and the median income for a family was $122,526.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pinecrest,_Florida
Jackson is a fraud, a carbon copy of grifter Barack Obama. These people share nothing in common with minorities. Nada
Clarence Thomas is the real black man on SCOTUS, that leftist blacks vilify because he is a success story who came from nothing.
From Wiki:
Thomas was born on June 23, 1948, in Pin Point, Georgia. Pin Point was a small, predominantly black community near Savannah founded by freedmen after the Civil War. He was the second of three children born to M. C. Thomas, a farm worker, and Leola “Pigeon” Williams, a domestic worker.[8][9][10] They were descendants of enslaved people and spoke Gullah as a first language.[11] Thomas’s earliest known ancestors were slaves named Sandy and Peggy, who were born in the late 18th century and owned by wealthy planter Josiah Wilson of Liberty County, Georgia.[12]
Thomas’s father left the family when Thomas was two years old. Though Thomas’s mother worked long hours, she was sometimes paid only pennies per day, struggled to earn enough money to feed the family, and was forced to rely on charity.[13] After a house fire left them homeless, Thomas and his younger brother, Myers, were taken to live in Savannah with his maternal grandparents, Myers and Christine (née Hargrove) Anderson.[14][a]
I cant imagine how Jackson has the ovaries, or perhaps its balls, to sit anywhere near Thomas while in the SCOTUS building, knowing the vast disparity that exists between Jackson and Thomas. I’ll say it again because it deserves being repeated: Jackson is a total and complete fraud.
Pinecrest FFS!!!
I’ll say it again because it deserves being repeated: Jackson is a total and complete fraud.
Absolutely!
We need look no further than Biden’s choice of Kamala Harris to see how affirmative action selection based entirely on race and sex gave us a vice president who is clearly not up to the role, or the job of leading the country should that be required.
She’s at least as capable as Pence, and more capable than Quayle.
You could say she is at least as qualified as….but she is not as capable….not by a long shot.
Plus her inappropriate giggling and laughing every time she speaks is something she clearly cannot control. She keeps doing it.
We never saw Pence or Quayle start laughing hysterically at inappropriate times.
Kamala is way out of her depth. That’s obvious by now.
She’s never grown much beyond being Montel Williams’ and Willie Brown’s side Ho. Oh yes, I said it. Hey now….
hey whoever “liked” that comment….Kamala the giggler is way out of her depth. It’s beyond obvious.
Your comment demonstrates your lack of insight.
Ending discrimination by race in the university admissions process will not end discrimination by race in the university admissions process. What the ruling does is end an overt process step, but it will have the same impact as Dobbs has had on abortion, or perhaps a better example is what has happened since we ended “overt” wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. The cancerous cultures within these industries have metastasized beyond the treatment that ending overt wars or court rulings can fix. Just like the rot in our federal bureaucracies, this is going to require far more radical efforts than just saying ‘don’t do that.’
The Affirmative Action decision.
1. Harvard has a 40+ BILLION endowment-and would not have to charge tuition ever again.
If they wanted, they could refuse students who need Federal Aid (as does Hillsdale) and discriminate any way they choose on admissions.
2. Why can’t students apply with their “identity” as black to get in-do they need a DNA test to prove their race to Harvard?
Not even Harvard can give up on the funds from Federal research grants (much less the prestige of being one of the top awardees of such grants). I believe failure to follow this decision would also preclude receiving those awards.
Dear Prof Turley,
Everything is relative. What’s “normal” for Biden, may be bat crap crazy to others. .. even in Biden’s more lucid moments.
Thanks to modern science, there are tests to determine base-line cognitive functioning. .. and Article #25 in the Declaration of Independence!
*of course, nothing can be done for someone who chooses truth over facts.
Well, after the latest SC decisions I suppose we’ll be hearing “the leak for the weekend” about President Trump?
So the Big Guy has a muddled, mixed-up opinion to share that further confuses, inflames and divides the country? Say it ain’t so.
“We can not solve our problems with the same level of thinking that created them”
― Albert Einstein
As I see it….Justice Ketanji is still stuck at the level of thinking that sees government-imposed discrimation (systemic racism) as the means to right the wrongs of past discrimination. Justice Clarence appeals to our better nature as enshrined in our founding documents.
He grew up in Jim Crow south, dirt poor, with dirt floors. His own life experience gives gravitas and weight to his opinions on the issue. He rises above his past and is aspirational in his thinking. Yet we have Joey, Ketanji, Sonia, Barack, Michelle, Whoopi, et al, all still stuck at the same level of “race-infused” thinking that created the discrimination in the first place.
Justice Thomas is opining and thinking from at least three levels up….which is why the rest of them cannot even hear what he is saying….his thinking is literally above and beyond their comprehension.
Good couple of days at SCOTUS, with affirmative action, web designer and student loan cases all decided in well-reasoned opinions. The Court is starting to do its job.
Biden’s mixing and matching the Declaration of Independence with the Constitution is common for a person in full dementia. Why it is so jarring to conservatives, is because the radical Dems HATE the DoI because of its faith based structure celebrating freedom and individualism. All basic cultural touchstones that built this great nation.
After reading J. Sotomayor’s dissent and trying to follow her logic, I think that I can better understand (albeit not agree with) Biden’s reaction.
It seems to me that promoting the admissions of students by demographics into college in approximately the same proportion as in the general population is considered by those on the political left as creating “equal opportunity”. It is not the equal opportunity to be judged on merits as an individual but rather the equalization of students by demographics to the opportunity to have choices after college that seems to be the unstated goal – all the while the public mantra is a “diverse” student body which frankly doesn’t make sense.
If one takes the political left’s warped sense of “equal opportunity” to its logical conclusion, then every organization’s hiring, acceptance, or membership must be carefully managed to ensure the demographic equalization of outcomes – equity in short. This clearly flies in the face of human nature and the individual’s desire to pursue happiness. Is there any evidence that this approach makes any sense in the hiring of Chinese language teachers, nurses, construction workers, NBA players, primary school teachers, concert pianists, etc.?
We should recognize that, due to a variety of cultural, biological, and evolutionary forces, the demographic distribution of any organization if freely determined by individual desires will not, in general, reflect that of the general population.And that is ok.
Not only is he referencing the wrong document, he is editing it. The Declaration says “all men.” It does not say “and women.’ Not even presidents have license to edit historical documents to serve their political interests. It’s kind of like an inverse plagiarism.
Biden has no “Normal” and never did. He is and always has been a cheap con man.
Biden is “Becoming More Unhinged from History”? To Biden, history is nothing more than a tool to be taken out of context and distorted to the extent necessary to achieve his personal goals.
The only question: Are Biden’s followers the stooges or is Biden the stooge?
Biden is also wrong about 1860. The War Between the States actually started in 1861. Lincoln was elected in 1860 – with 32% of the vote – and his government of socialists, communists and abolitionists took over the government. Lincoln didn’t issue his “emancipation proclamation” in September 1862 with an implementation date in 1863. I suppose the war is responsible for the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Amendments since former Confederates were denied the right to vote and ratification was required for readmission to a Union Lincoln claimed they never left.
Unfortunately, the court’s decision will not end racial discrimination in college admissions. The court left a hole a mile wide that the schools can drive through. The court said that they can still consider an applicant’s letter describing how they overcame racial discrimination. It is predictable that every minority applicant will submit such a letter and claim that they overcame racial discrimination to get to the doors of whatever elite school they are applying to. Bingo – the school can justify admitting them. Discrimination might become more subtle, but it will not end. The reaction to the court’s decision by both left and right is overblown.
smart analysis
avoid the herd at all costs
Easy solution which Its a Tax Roberts once said but (predictably) would never do: just stop using race as a criterion for government benefits. Unlawful to ask questions about an applicant’s race.
(Is it just me or does Roberts remind others of the teacher’s pet, the know-it-all grade school snot who sits in the front row, always raises his hand and never has to stay after class?)
@Lou Stahl: Re: ” Discrimination might become more subtle, but it will not end.” Quite right. The loopholes cited give the consumer an ‘open door’ to make personal judgements about the qualifications of individuals in their chosen fields based upon the same criteria. Given the doubt perpetuated by the practice, that the best are not necessarily chosen based upon merit, choose your neurosurgeon wisely. They may not all be as gifted as Ben Carson. Chance favoring the prepared mind continues to run second to complexion. I doubt that the thought ever came to mind before Affirmative Action was set loose upon the land. If a POC possessed a Harvard degree,as with anyone else, it was deemed impressive.. Perhaps even more so given that moment in time. Now it is taken with a caveat Sad.
The US is in decline. It happens to all empires and Biden is accelerating the decline for partisan purposes. He never misses a chance to inflame tensions by saying stupid things like half the country are fascists, and America’s top court is “not normal”. His cognitive decline is on display every day yet the Democrat Party says he’s their candidate for another term.
Pretty sure Putin, Xi and the Ayatollahs, along with Kim Jung Un, will be cheering for him. Think about that, America.