The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case on affirmative action and it is quite possible that this case may result in and end to racial preferences.
Why? For one thing, Kagan has recused herself from this case.
Even more importantly, Sandra Day O' Connor has been replaced with Samuel Alito since the court last issued a decision on affirmative action.
Thus we have Thomas, Alito, Scalia, and Roberts who will all likely vote to end affirmative action altogether. Kennedy, on the other hand, is the swing vote. He is no fan of affirmative action, but has acknowledged the benefit of diversity in theory and so might vote to maintain affirmative action as a theoretical possibility, but nevertheless might impose so many restrictions as to render it effectively dead.
I'd say the best that supporters of affirmative action can hope for is that the court will focus on the narrow particularities of the Texas case and avoid making a sweeping decision.
This, combined with the case regarding ObamaCare, should make this a very interesting and significant year at the Supreme Court.
Why? For one thing, Kagan has recused herself from this case.
Even more importantly, Sandra Day O' Connor has been replaced with Samuel Alito since the court last issued a decision on affirmative action.
Thus we have Thomas, Alito, Scalia, and Roberts who will all likely vote to end affirmative action altogether. Kennedy, on the other hand, is the swing vote. He is no fan of affirmative action, but has acknowledged the benefit of diversity in theory and so might vote to maintain affirmative action as a theoretical possibility, but nevertheless might impose so many restrictions as to render it effectively dead.
I'd say the best that supporters of affirmative action can hope for is that the court will focus on the narrow particularities of the Texas case and avoid making a sweeping decision.
This, combined with the case regarding ObamaCare, should make this a very interesting and significant year at the Supreme Court.
I love the quote by Chief Justice Roberts, and I couldn't agree more.In 2003, in a case called Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court upheld the race-conscious admissions policy at the University of Michigan’s law school, reasoning that a diverse student body improves the education of all students. As the majority explained, “classroom discussion is livelier, more spirited, and simply more enlightening and interesting when students have the greatest possible variety of backgrounds.” A diverse student body also prepares students for their professional careers, as “the skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace can only be developed through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.”
Yet this strong endorsement of race-based affirmative action came in a 5–4 decision in which the deciding vote was cast by Justice Sandra Day O’Connor—the nation’s first female justice and a well-known moderate. In 2005, O’Connor retired. President George W. Bush replaced her with Samuel Alito—a justice no one would call a moderate.
This one change already has led to the reversal of numerous prior precedents, from abortion rights to corporate political speech. Grutter appears to be next on the chopping block.
The Texas case began in 2008, when Abigail Noel Fisher, a white applicant, was denied admission to the undergraduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. Even though Fisher’s record in high school was not good enough to guarantee her admission, she believed she was turned away solely because of her race. In an effort to insure a diverse class of entering students, the University of Texas engaged in what Fisher called “blatant racial balancing.”
She is likely to find a warm reception for that argument in the Roberts court, which has yet to see a race-conscious affirmative-action policy it likes. Two terms ago, the justices voted 5–4 to overturn an effort by the New Haven fire department, which had a long history of racial discrimination, to institute a test for promotions that was designed to reduce the lack of minority representation. Both Alito and Roberts voted with the majority. In 2007, those two also joined the majority in a decision rejecting voluntary public-school-integration policies in Seattle and Kentucky, which had been enacted so that there wouldn’t be some schools that were nearly all white and others that were nearly all minority. Critics said the court had all but overturned Brown v. Board of Education.
That may be an overstatement, but it is clear that the court’s majority is not a friend to affirmative action. Chief Justice Roberts announced in the public-schools case, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”http://www.thedailybeast.com/articl...action-with-fisher-v-university-of-texas.html