Affirmative Action May Be Dying -YEY!!!

[Carborendum]

https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

Summary:  Official Decision (and Opinions) released today in a 6-3 vote at SCOTUS.

Race-based admissions at Universities (Harvard and UNC) violates the equal protection clause of the Constitution.

Well, duh-uh.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Carborendum

[Still_Small_Voice]

I think Affirmative Action needs to go away.  This Supreme Court decision is certainly one step in the correct direction for that.

[Vort]

And predictably, the SC lefties raise the shriek of despair. Thank heavens for Amy Coney Barrett.

[NeuroTypical]

Chief Justice Roberts: Affirmative action programs “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.”

 

Ketanji Brown Jackson (dissenting): “Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America,” Jackson wrote, “to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considered whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizenry.”

That's Critical Race Theory and Antiracism philosophy, as advanced by folks like Ibrahm Kendi.  You don't look at what's right, you look at what's an equalizing force that corrects centuries of injustice.  That's the time I mention that my ancestors came here from Scotland, where they were fleeing lives of indentured servitude to the British king.  And that I trace my genealogy back to Pocahontas' parents.  And that Gov. Boggs' Mormon Extermination Order was on Missouri books until the 1990's.  And that thousands of freed blacks went on to own slaves themselves.  And that...

[Grunt]

NH banned affirmative action in public schools in 2012, so......

[Guest Godless]

Interesting footnote here from Roberts.

What are the "potentially distinct interests" that he's trying to protect?

[Vort]

23 minutes ago, Godless said:

Interesting footnote here from Roberts.

What are the "potentially distinct interests" that he's trying to protect?

I am neither politically astute nor a lawyer, but to me the meaning seems evident enough. It has been widely recognized for over a century that conscription in the US armed services provides a pathway to social and educational advancement for many, including especially for the socioeconomically disadvantaged. Since the socioeconomically disadvantaged are disproportionately black, the Army, Navy, Marine Corps, and Air Force provide an attractive possibility to the black community as a whole (if such a beast exists, which I doubt). "Community" or not, black people have profited from service to their country, and as a result, the country as a whole has benefited. It is arguable at best that higher rates of conscription of black people benefits the purely military activities of the armed services, but I think the total societal benefit is obvious.

Roberts appears to be making the (rather obvious, IMO) observation that the military plays by different rules from everyone else, and therefore if the military decides that a racially biased admissions policy is on the whole beneficial, this present ruling will not necessarily apply in that situation. He's not saying it's okay for the military to be racist, only that if the military is racist, this particular ruling will not necessarily hold for that case.

[Carborendum]

1 hour ago, Godless said:

What are the "potentially distinct interests" that he's trying to protect?

My guess:

The specific purpose of military academies is to produce career military officers.  These officers will oversee enlisted men.

These enlisted men are disproportionately black.  Supposedly (again, I'm guessing as to his meaning) officers should show similar racial demographics as the enlisted men they command to give their lives for their country.

This partially admits that racism still exists in this country.  And when it is a matter of sending someone on a dangerous mission, officers may well choose "cannon fodder" made up of people they just don't like.  The motivation is political, it is cultural, etc.

(Just my guess).

In the commercial world, it is completely different.  Livelihood may be an issue.  But rarely is life on the line.  If a person actually has greater ability and is willing to work for lower pay, virtually every boss in a free market would fall all over themselves to pick up all such individuals.  That's how money motivates people.  

In free commerce, talent (more than any other factor) will be rewarded in one way or another, unless government sticks its nose into things.

NOTE: This does not necessarily mean that I endorse Robert's footnote or the amicus exception.  But I would guess that was the meaning of the footnote.

Edited June 29, 2023 by Carborendum

[NeuroTypical]

I don't have the first clue why the military verbiage is there.   I do have some vaguely related 80 year old anecdotes.  

3 hours ago, Vort said:

It has been widely recognized for over a century that conscription in the US armed services provides a pathway to social and educational advancement for many, including especially for the socioeconomically disadvantaged.

That was my Daddy in WWII.  He and his family had survived the great depression, and were quite poor, to the point of not having enough food.  My grandpa would ride the rails looking for work, would send money back home, and try to scrape together enough $ to bring his family out to where he was.  Oklahoma, Missouri, New Mexico, Utah, rinse, repeat.  My dad was the oldest of his siblings, and when we were attacked, he immediately joined up, because it meant the military would feed/clothe/equip him, and he could send most of his pay back to mom and his siblings.  He joined the Air Force, but eventually got drafted into the infantry, and was thrown at the Battle of the Bulge. 

"Twenty-one dollars a day, once a month", free life insurance, free GI bill education opportunities, plus the opportunity to return to a grateful nation as a war hero - these were worth dying for in the 1930's.  

 

As for racism in the army, my dad held many unvarnished unapologetic racist and sexist beliefs which were quite prevalent in that generation.  He was mad his entire life that blacks were allowed in the military, and I grew up hearing stories about all the reasons that was a bad idea.  He died a few years before they allowed women into the military, and the running gag ever since was that he timed his death so he wouldn't have to live in a country that allowed such things. 

[Carborendum]

15 hours ago, Godless said:

What are the "potentially distinct interests" that he's trying to protect?

OK, I finally found what the hubbub was about.

There was a previous SCOTUS decision in the case Grutter-v-Bollinger & Gratz-v-Bollinger (two cases in one) in which the NOW Legal Defense and Education Fund (along with several other amicus curiae submitted an amicus brief.  They pointed out that the US had signed a treaty to which it agreed to allow race-based affirmative action at the military academies.

"International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights"
"International Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Racial Discrimination"

My first reaction to this is that it seems like they're saying that treaties supersede the Constitution.  That simply cannot be.  Then I realized that the arguments presented do not state that we must follow the Treaty above the Constitution.  Rather, they indicate that international customs, laws, and adjudications should inform SCOTUS on the topic and allow such programs to remain.

They call out several SCOTUS precedents such as Talbot v. Seeman where the majority opinion stated: "The laws of the United States ought not, if it be avoidable, so to be construed as to infract the common principles and usages of nations". Apparently, SCOTUS has decided that for the military academies, it can be avoidable.  But not for others.

I disagree with this as a proper justification for this amicus exception.  But there it sits.  I'm now looking at the decision from 20 years ago.  Maybe that will tell us something.

[Carborendum]

Grutter v. Bollinger Opinions See attachment for the full file.

MAJORITY OPINION:

Schools should sufficiently consider race neutral methods before resorting to race-based admissions to obtain educational diversity.

(Note: Racial diversity =/= educational diversity)

Race-based methods may be used as an alternative after race neutral methods have been considered.

In deference to the 14th Amendment, such methods must be limited in time (i.e. at some point we will need to do away with this)

"We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest that we approve today."

1st PARTIALLY CONCURRING OPINION:

• Ginsburg (w/ Breyer Concurring) specifically concurs that affirmative action "must have a logical end point." 
• This "accords with the international office of affirmative action."
• This issue shall not be considered "settled."

Two more partially concurring opinions.  Nothing earthshattering.

But none of them address what was so special about military academies.  It seemed that all the arguments brought by the amicus curiae applied equally to other universities.  But apparently there was "something special" about military academies that Roberts decided to highlight.  We have no further information on that in the published opinions.

Grutter v. Bollinger Opinions.pdf

[Just_A_Guy]

One other possibility, with the caveat that I haven’t read the new opinion and it’s been 15 years since I read the old affirmative action cases:  

The old precedents allowed for affirmative action in the name of diversity, but not for the sake of righting past discrimination.  Rather, the schools were arguing that they needed affirmative action to build an intellectually diverse class of students, in order to provide a more meaningful educational experience by fostering cross-cultural or cross-racial interactions for all of their students.  SCOTUS basically said “fine, if you can make a straight-faced argument that this serves an honest-to-gosh educational purpose, we aren’t going to tell you how you can or can’t provide your students with the kind of educational experience you, the university, think they need.”

It *might* be that Roberts is thinking “okay, educational/racial diversity might be important to turn out humanities scholars and I’ll defer to private/state-run entities to weigh that principal on their own, but the object of the federal military service academies is to win wars and we reserve the right to look at the academy’s educational methods to see if ‘diversity’ actually serves that purpose.”

Edited July 3, 2023 by Just_A_Guy

[Carborendum]

3 hours ago, Just_A_Guy said:

It *might* be that Roberts is thinking “okay, educational/racial diversity might be important to turn out humanities scholars and I’ll defer to private/state-run entities to weigh that principal on their own, but the object of the federal military service academies is to win wars and we reserve the right to look at the academy’s educational methods to see if ‘diversity’ actually serves that purpose.”

That would be an argument (if correct) that would claim a logical difference between military academies vs other institutions of learning.  But I still don't believe that is a correct argument.

Racial differences aren't what create "diversity".  It is cultural differences.  And there are many who can share similar cultures but be composed of different races.  And, conversely many people of the same race can have completely different cultures.

A more accurate method of determining cultural differences would be place of birth or upbringing and religion.

If culture doesn't matter and merit doesn't matter, then why wouldn't we just say that we also need a proportionate number of mentally handicapped individuals in each university and place of work as well?  Shouldn't my engineering office have the requisite mentally handicapped engineer?  (TBH, I believe I've worked with some).

Edited July 3, 2023 by Carborendum