It's just a hop, skip and a jump for this conservative SC to strike down Civil Rights laws

[bigtree]

...now the right wing majority has decided that colleges doing ANYTHING to address racial disparities violates the Equal Protection Clause and is itself discriminatory.

This Court has made the decision that the nation is now 'colorblind' and no law should be considered on the basis of skin color, even ones that redress or confront societal wrongs. Yet, Brown v. Board of Education, which overruled Plessy v. Ferguson’s “separate but equal” doctrine, the Civil Rights Act and Voting Rights Act all make distinctions between racial groups in their remedies to racial discrimination.

LaTimes:

Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Constitution forbids treating people differently based on their race.

“The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of their skin color is not like treating them differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well,” he wrote.

In dissent, liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the majority of ignoring America’s history as well as continuing racism today. “Our country has never been colorblind,” Jackson wrote.

The term 'colorblind' was used in the lone dissent by Justice Harlan to the ruling making the 1869 Plessy decision law. He wrote:

"In the eye of the law, there is in this country no superior, dominant, ruling class of citizens. There is no caste here. "Our constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens. In respect of civil rights, all citizens are equal before the law. The humblest is the peer of the most powerful. . .The arbitrary separation of citizens on the basis of race, while they are on a public highway, is a badge of servitude wholly inconsistent with the civil freedom and the equality before the law established by the Constitution. It cannot be justified upon any legal grounds."

"What can more certainly arouse race hate, what more certainly create and perpetuate a feeling of distrust between these races, than state enactments, which, in fact, proceed on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens? That, as all will admit, is the real meaning of such legislation."

It was later used by Thurgood Marshall in successfully overturning Plessy. “Our Constitution is colorblind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” he wrote.

Now that their segregationist arguments had failed in court, opponents of desegregation immediately began to use the 'colorblind' argument to claim there was no need for laws regulating racial discrimination, and no place in the law for such defenses against discrimination.

The opposition to affirmative action today which uses 'colorblind' as a hook against affirmative action, is the same demagoguery that was used in the immediate wake of the passage of Civil Rights legislation. Now that we have a Supreme Court majority ruling against race-based action to address racial disparities in education, what's stopping them from applying that disingenuous logic to other race-based legal remedies?

[brush]

1. That might be next. Neo-jim crow era, here we come

[edhopper]

2. They already have

By striking down the effective part of the Voting Rights Act.
They will strike down more.

[cilla4progress]

3. That's what I'm thinking

Brown v Board of Education
Obergefell

[2naSalit]

4. Sliding down...

That slippery slope.

[jimfields33]

5. Is there a lawsuit? If not, this won't happen.

If a lawsuit and it goes through the courts maybe the Supreme Court would take it. A lawsuit has to be filed first.

[SickOfTheOnePct]

6. Not to mention

That Brown v. Board of Education is all about not treating people, students in that case, differently because of their race. Today's ruling, whether we like it or not, is actually in alignment with Brown, not in opposition to it.

[jimfields33]

7. Very true.

[newdayneeded]

15. I agree, it is written that way.

[MOMFUDSKI]

8. The method is to bring a lawsuit hoping

it gets to the SC and then BINGO. You can bet it is already in process and just a matter of time.

[Wounded Bear]

9. Gleefully working to erase the 20th Century...

[Hassler]

10. This is what breaking abortion rights has been about for 50 years

[bigtree]

16. interesting point

...I think LGBT rights are up next.

I agree that much of what they advocate is a stalking horse for evisceration of rights women, minorities, and working-class and working poor families and individuals rely on to survive and prosper. It's corporate-driven and cynically directed to the less advantaged in society, economic and otherwise.

Link to tweet

[Historic NY]

11. The very beginning of the US Constitution treated people differently

All men are not created equally. 3/5 rule. Indians were excluded under the not taxed rule so not to be as Americans. Women is another example. So now they want to take away a rule made to make people more equal.

[Mblaze]

12. Quoting Roberts:

“The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of their skin color is not like treating them differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well,”

It seems that Roberts is the one who focuses only on race. I think that universities take much more into consideration besides just the color of the skin. I’m sure that suburbs, cities, skills, personality, recommendations all come into play. The “conservatives” on the Court want to strip it all down to the racial aspect so they can take freedom away from universities. To be blunt, I think they consider affirmative action to be “woke”.

[UTUSN]

13. K&R

[shanti]

14. They are NOT done