The Supreme Court announced Monday it’s taking up another big culture war case, bringing affirmative action back in another look at overturning Supreme Court precedent. Of course they are, because when Federalist Society born-and-bred Republicans are asked about it by senators in their confirmation hearings, they lie.
The Court will be taking up two challenges in a consolidated oral argument that will be heard in the term starting in October, Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. In 2003, the court issued a landmark decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in which it held that the University of Michigan could use race as a criterion in admissions to ensure it was creating a diverse student body. The court reaffirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action in 2016 in Fisher v. University of Texas, when it ruled the university could consider race in undergraduate admissions.
That was then, this is now. In the Trump court, the promises of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett that cases like this one—with “precedent on precedent”—could not be casually overturned have proven empty. The court even decided to expedite the UNC case, which hadn’t yet been taken up by an appeals court. That’s another feature of that new conservative-dominated court.
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It’s also worth pointing out that Students for Fair Admissions and founder Edward Blum have a long history of fighting affirmative action as well as voting rights. SFFA also brought the Fisher case. The supposed non-profit SFFA says its mission is to help “restore colorblind principles to our nation’s schools, colleges, and universities.”
Blum, a failed congressional candidate who lost a challenge to Barbara Jordan back in the 1990s, has made his career since centered on white supremacy. He backed the challengers in Shelby County v. Holder back in 2013 in the Supreme Court decision that gutted the core of the Voting Rights Act with another group he founded, the Project on Fair Representation, a supposedly non-profit “legal defense fund program that is designed to support litigation that challenges racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in state and federal courts.”
Combined with using the shadow docket to decide some of the most controversial and extreme rulings with no public argument and no transparency, this Trump-packed court is looking more radical by the day.
Radical and unprincipled and with a serious legitimacy problem. That was brought home once again in this well-researched and devastating profile of Ginni Thomas—spouse of Justice Clarence Thomas—by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. Mayer details Ginni Thomas’s long history of associations with extremist far-right groups and her many and close ties to the groups driving the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Just to underline all the ethical problems a Supreme Court justice with an exceedingly partisan and active spouse can bring, Thomas not only failed to recuse himself from participating in the recent Trump documents case, but he also provided the only dissent. The court ruled 8-1 that White House documents relating to Jan. 6 cannot be shielded from the congressional select committee investigating the insurrection. What could be in those documents that he wants to remain secret, I wonder.
There are a few things that have to happen to save the country from this extremist, increasingly white supremacist court. One should be relatively easy and non-controversial, which is to force the justices to adhere to the code of conduct every other federal judge is bound by.
The second is to expand the Supreme Court with thoughtful, legitimate nominees who are not bound to the extreme Republican party.
The Court will be taking up two challenges in a consolidated oral argument that will be heard in the term starting in October, Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. In 2003, the court issued a landmark decision in Grutter v. Bollinger in which it held that the University of Michigan could use race as a criterion in admissions to ensure it was creating a diverse student body. The court reaffirmed the constitutionality of affirmative action in 2016 in Fisher v. University of Texas, when it ruled the university could consider race in undergraduate admissions.
That was then, this is now. In the Trump court, the promises of Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett that cases like this one—with “precedent on precedent”—could not be casually overturned have proven empty. The court even decided to expedite the UNC case, which hadn’t yet been taken up by an appeals court. That’s another feature of that new conservative-dominated court.
Campaign Action
It’s also worth pointing out that Students for Fair Admissions and founder Edward Blum have a long history of fighting affirmative action as well as voting rights. SFFA also brought the Fisher case. The supposed non-profit SFFA says its mission is to help “restore colorblind principles to our nation’s schools, colleges, and universities.”
Blum, a failed congressional candidate who lost a challenge to Barbara Jordan back in the 1990s, has made his career since centered on white supremacy. He backed the challengers in Shelby County v. Holder back in 2013 in the Supreme Court decision that gutted the core of the Voting Rights Act with another group he founded, the Project on Fair Representation, a supposedly non-profit “legal defense fund program that is designed to support litigation that challenges racial and ethnic classifications and preferences in state and federal courts.”
Combined with using the shadow docket to decide some of the most controversial and extreme rulings with no public argument and no transparency, this Trump-packed court is looking more radical by the day.
Radical and unprincipled and with a serious legitimacy problem. That was brought home once again in this well-researched and devastating profile of Ginni Thomas—spouse of Justice Clarence Thomas—by the New Yorker’s Jane Mayer. Mayer details Ginni Thomas’s long history of associations with extremist far-right groups and her many and close ties to the groups driving the Jan. 6 insurrection.
Just to underline all the ethical problems a Supreme Court justice with an exceedingly partisan and active spouse can bring, Thomas not only failed to recuse himself from participating in the recent Trump documents case, but he also provided the only dissent. The court ruled 8-1 that White House documents relating to Jan. 6 cannot be shielded from the congressional select committee investigating the insurrection. What could be in those documents that he wants to remain secret, I wonder.
There are a few things that have to happen to save the country from this extremist, increasingly white supremacist court. One should be relatively easy and non-controversial, which is to force the justices to adhere to the code of conduct every other federal judge is bound by.
The second is to expand the Supreme Court with thoughtful, legitimate nominees who are not bound to the extreme Republican party.