{"id":11230,"date":"2023-07-19T11:47:06","date_gmt":"2023-07-19T11:47:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=11230"},"modified":"2023-07-19T11:47:06","modified_gmt":"2023-07-19T11:47:06","slug":"the-scotus-decision-on-affirmative-action-in-colleges-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=11230","title":{"rendered":"The SCOTUS decision on affirmative action in colleges, explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“The immediate question in the two lawsuits before the Supreme Court \u2014 Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College<\/em><\/a> and Students For Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina<\/em><\/a> \u2014 was whether the Supreme Court should overrule Grutter v. Bollinger<\/em>, the 2003 case thatheld that race may play a limited role in college admissions. In practice, race often functions as a tiebreaker when universities are deciding among many well-qualified students.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

According to Vox\u2019s Ian Millhiser<\/a>, the decision does not explicitly overrule the Court\u2019s previous decisions permitting affirmative action, but it will almost certainly have the same effect as a total ban.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

 The overarching stakes in these cases, however, are much broader. The plaintiffs advocateda \u201ccolorblind\u201d theory<\/a> of the Constitution that would prohibit the government from considering race in virtually any context, including efforts to voluntarily integrate racially segregated grade schools<\/a> and other institutions. Decisions such as Grutter<\/em> have given the government limited authority to foster racial diversity. The Harvard<\/em> and UNC<\/em> decisionis likely to eliminate that authority altogether.”  
<\/p>\n\n\n\n

…<\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Affirmative action has been used for more than half a century by colleges and universities, initially to encourage the participation of historically marginalized groups and mitigate the effects of decades of segregation by university systems. Since the landmark Regents of the University of California v. Bakke<\/em><\/a>case in 1978, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that such programs can be used as a tool to foster diversity among a university\u2019s student body, and that an applicant\u2019s race or ethnic background could be deemed a plus when deciding between applicants who are similarly qualified. The Court determined that students from underrepresented racial backgrounds could \u201cpromote beneficial educational pluralism\u201d that benefits all students \u2014 a goal compelling enough to the justices that they have continued its use. Since Bakke<\/em>, the Court has upheld affirmative action in admissions despite multiple challenges, including Fisher v. University of Texas<\/em><\/a>, decided as recently as 2016, in which Abigail N. Fisher, a white woman, claimed that she was rejected from the University of Texas at Austin because of preferences given to applicants of color.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although decades<\/a> of research<\/a> support the conclusion that more diverse campuses benefit all students, the premise of the \u201ccolorblindness\u201d theory is that race-conscious policies are so inherently misguided that they cannot be sustained regardless of their benefits.This theory has been around for a very long time \u2014 President Andrew Johnson, the white supremacist<\/a> who spent much of his time in office frustrating Reconstruction, vetoed laws seeking to lift up enslaved people who had been freed because he claimed they would \u201cestablish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race<\/a>.\u201dMore recently, conservatives including President Ronald Reagan have made similar attacks on affirmative action \u2014 often describing such programs as \u201creverse discrimination<\/a>.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Now, this kind of rhetoric is being echoed by Blum (who was, notably, also involved in the Fisher case). \u201cIn a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others,\u201d Blum said<\/a> in a statement in January. \u201cOur nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences.\u201d”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/policy-and-politics\/23405267\/affirmative-action-supreme-court-ruling-race-harvard-unc-chapel-hill<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“The immediate question in the two lawsuits before the Supreme Court \u2014 Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students For Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina \u2014 was whether the Supreme Court should overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case that held that race may play a limited role in college admissions. In practice, race often functions as a tiebreaker when universities are deciding among many well-qualified students.
\nAccording to Vox\u2019s Ian Millhiser, the decision does not explicitly overrule the Court\u2019s previous decisions permitting affirmative action, but it will almost certainly have the same effect as a total ban.<\/p>\n

The overarching stakes in these cases, however, are much broader. The plaintiffs advocated a \u201ccolorblind\u201d theory of the Constitution that would prohibit the government from considering race in virtually any context, including efforts to voluntarily integrate racially segregated grade schools and other institutions. Decisions such as Grutter have given the government limited authority to foster racial diversity. The Harvard and UNC decision is likely to eliminate that authority altogether.” <\/p>\n

…<\/p>\n

“Affirmative action has been used for more than half a century by colleges and universities, initially to encourage the participation of historically marginalized groups and mitigate the effects of decades of segregation by university systems. Since the landmark Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in 1978, the Supreme Court has repeatedly held that such programs can be used as a tool to foster diversity among a university\u2019s student body, and that an applicant\u2019s race or ethnic background could be deemed a plus when deciding between applicants who are similarly qualified. The Court determined that students from underrepresented racial backgrounds could \u201cpromote beneficial educational pluralism\u201d that benefits all students \u2014 a goal compelling enough to the justices that they have continued its use. Since Bakke, the Court has upheld affirmative action in admissions despite multiple challenges, including Fisher v. University of Texas, decided as recently as 2016, in which Abigail N. Fisher, a white woman, claimed that she was rejected from the University of Texas at Austin because of preferences given to applicants of color.<\/p>\n

Although decades of research support the conclusion that more diverse campuses benefit all students, the premise of the \u201ccolorblindness\u201d theory is that race-conscious policies are so inherently misguided that they cannot be sustained regardless of their benefits. This theory has been around for a very long time \u2014 President Andrew Johnson, the white supremacist who spent much of his time in office frustrating Reconstruction, vetoed laws seeking to lift up enslaved people who had been freed because he claimed they would \u201cestablish for the security of the colored race safeguards which go infinitely beyond any that the General Government has ever provided for the white race.\u201d More recently, conservatives including President Ronald Reagan have made similar attacks on affirmative action \u2014 often describing such programs as \u201creverse discrimination.\u201d<\/p>\n

Now, this kind of rhetoric is being echoed by Blum (who was, notably, also involved in the Fisher case). \u201cIn a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others,\u201d Blum said in a statement in January. \u201cOur nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences.\u201d”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1750,94,790,1213,528,1767],"class_list":["post-11230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-affirmative-action","tag-colleges","tag-courts","tag-judiciary","tag-supreme-court","tag-university"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=11230"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11231,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11230\/revisions\/11231"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=11230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=11230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=11230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}