The Supreme Court is going to be reviewing a case that could be a serious win for conservatives in the near future, and Justice Thomas has some choice words about the subject.
SCOTUS has agreed to review a challenge to affirmative action, a.k.a. the consideration of race in college admission decisions. The two cases headed to the court specifically center around two colleges, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, who are being sued over apparent discrimination against Asian and white Americans.
“The Supreme Court agrees to hear a pair of cases that challenge the race-based affirmative action policies for admission at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina,” SCOTUS Blog reported on January 24th. “The cases likely will be argued next term.”
Alex Deise, an attorney and policy manager at FreedomWorks, spoke with The Daily Wire about the issue.
“By taking these cases, the Supreme Court has a historic opportunity to eliminate the ability of colleges and universities to explicitly discriminate on the basis of race in their admissions process,” Deise said.
“The Court made a serious mistake in Grutter v Bollinger (2003) when it upheld these processes under the false notion that the educational benefits from a diverse student body was more important than the Equal Protection Clause’s central command of race neutrality,” he added. “The Court should overrule Grutter and heed Chief Justice Roberts advice from a similar case that ‘[t]he way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.’”
Conservative Justice Clarence Thomas has spoken about the issue, and seems poised to vote in favor of abolishing the racist practice.
“I note that racial engineering does in fact have insidious consequences,” Justice Thomas wrote, concerning a challenge to an affirmative action program at the University of Texas. “There can be no doubt that the University’s discrimination injures white and Asian applicants who are denied admission because of their race. But I believe the injury to those admitted under the University’s discriminatory admissions program is even more harmful.”
“Blacks and Hispanics admitted to the University as a result of racial discrimination are, on average, far less prepared than their white and Asian classmates,” he said.
“The University admits minorities who otherwise would have attended less selective colleges where they would have been more evenly matched,” Justice Thomas argued. “But, as a result of the mismatching, many blacks and Hispanics who likely would have excelled at less elite schools are placed in a position where underperformance is all but inevitable because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete. Setting aside the damage wreaked upon the self- confidence of these overmatched students, there is no evidence that they learn more at the University than they would have learned at other schools for which they were better prepared. Indeed, they may learn less.”
