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| Huge anti-Asian discrimination. Asians in top decile less likely to get a place at Harvard than Blacks in the 4th |
The Supreme Court ruled on various issues this year, including
Afirmative action in college admissions,
The progressive Left has melted down. The don’t like a single one of these decisions. But in all the anger, I’ve not seen any objections that consider the core issues. Instead the decisions are attacked because the majority decision, 6-3, went the way of the conservatives and the three dissents weee the progressives (all female, as it happens). So the anger was all tribal. Amala Ekpunobi has a take. By the way, in almost all the Left’s take, no notice is taken of the anti-Asian racism. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson”s dissent for example, mentions it once only.
Yet there are constitutional principles on which the decisions were made, and SCOTUS is there to decide in constitutional issues. Not to make law, not to legislate progressive policies, not even to take note of whether decisions are popular or not.
The core issues are these:
Affirmative Action: the core issue is whether college admissions should be allowed to consider race. And the answer is: No. By the Constitution of the United States and by the 1964 Civil Rights Act. It’s very clear that race cannot be taken into account. In arguing for the continuation of AA, the proponents are arguing for the continuation of racism. Harvard Law professor Alan Dershowitz’s podcast on the decision.
Student debt relief: the Presidency doesn’t have the authority to make unilateral Executive Orders in this. All matters relating to budgets are the responsibility of Congress. Nancy Pelosi, then Democratic Speaker of the House, made this very clear in a lecture to her congressional colleagues. This was clear and known to Biden at the time, who used this chicanery to garner more votes in the 2020 election.
Free speech rights: this one was labelled by the progressive critics as “anti-gay” whereas it was a decision on compelled speech. You are not allowed to insist that someone say something if they don’t want to. The progressives gain by this too: they can’t be compelled to say “trans women are men”, for example.
As it turns out the decisions are much more popular in the broader population than they are on the progressive left. Majority of Americans support the latter two decisions, around 55% to 30-40% (5-15% don’t know). And quite large majorities agree with the Affirmative Action decision:
