Legal Insurrection by William A. Jacobson 6/29/2023
“JUSTICE JACKSON’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step…. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism …. Worse, the classifications that JUSTICE JACKSON draws are themselves race-based stereotypes…. “ Did I say Epic. I meant EPIC!!!Unlike Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (KBJ), whose dissent read like a furious letter to the college newspaper or chants at a rally. Or a seminar on CRT. She talked about “lived experience” and the majority’s “let them eat cake” attitude. And the left loved it.
Justice Thomas was having none of it. But first he laid the foundation (emphasis added):
In the wake of the Civil War, the country focused its attention on restoring the Union and establishing the legal status of newly freed slaves. The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that all persons born in the United States are citizens, entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship and the equal protection of the laws. Amdts. 13, 14. Because of that second founding, “Our Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).
This Court’s commitment to that equality principle has ebbed and flowed over time. After forsaking the principle for decades, offering a judicial imprimatur to segregation and ushering in the Jim Crow era, the Court finally corrected course in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), announcing that primary schools must either desegregate with all deliberate speed or else close their doors. See also Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955) (Brown II ). It then pulled back in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003), permitting universities to discriminate based on race in their admissions process (though only temporarily) in order to achieve alleged “educational benefits of diversity.” Id., at 319. Yet, the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right.
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… I join the majority opinion in full. I write separately to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution; to explain further the flaws of the Court’s Grutter jurisprudence; to clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race—including so-called affirmative action—are prohibited under the Constitution; and to emphasize the pernicious effects of all such discrimination.
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Combining the citizenship guarantee with the Privileges or Immunities Clause and the Equal Protection Clause, the Fourteenth Amendment ensures protection for all equal citizens of the Nation without regard to race. Put succinctly, “Our Constitution is color-blind.” Plessy, 163 U. S., at 559 (Harlan, J., dissenting).
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Despite the extensive evidence favoring the colorblind view, as detailed above, it appears increasingly in vogue to embrace an “antisubordination” view of the Fourteenth Amendment: that the Amendment forbids only laws that hurt, but not help, blacks. Such a theory lacks any basis in the original meaning of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Properly understood, our precedents have largely adhered to the Fourteenth Amendment’s demand for colorblind laws.
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In an effort to salvage their patently unconstitutional programs, the universities and their amici pivot to argue that the Fourteenth Amendment permits the use of race to benefit only certain racial groups—rather than applicants writ large. Yet, this is just the latest disguise for discrimination. The sudden narrative shift is not surprising, as it has long been apparent that “‘diversity [was] merely the current rationale of convenience’” to support racially discriminatory admissions programs. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 393 (Kennedy, J., dissenting). Under our precedents, this new rationale is also lacking.
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Without such guardrails, the Fourteenth Amendment would become self-defeating, promising a Nation based on the equality ideal but yielding a quota- and caste-ridden society steeped in race-based discrimination.
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Even taking the desire to help on its face, what initially seems like aid may in reality be a burden, including for the very people it seeks to assist. Take, for example, the college admissions policies here. “Affirmative action” policies do nothing to increase the overall number of blacks and Hispanics able to access a college education. Rather, those racial policies simply redistribute individuals among institutions of higher learning, placing some into more competitive institutions than they otherwise would have attended.
More:
https://legalinsurrection.com/2023/06/clarence-thomas-reading-his-epic-takedown-of-kbjs-dissent-left-her-visibly-angry/
