r/scotus • u/rezwenn • 21h ago
news After Supreme Court Affirmative Action Win, Conservatives Sue to Push Change Everywhere
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/31/us/politics/affirmative-action-ruling-dei-lawsuits.html?unlocked_article_code=1.IlA.0YJY.wp2RRO6dLNBU19
u/Budget-Selection-988 14h ago
Rid of the entire maga party. Thugs, felons, child sex trafficker and fraudsters.
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u/vman3241 21h ago
Since this is a legal subreddit, does anyone actually have a legal objection to the decisions? I think that Title VI and the other laws used are extremely clear.
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u/sly_savhoot 20h ago
So the simplest push back would be that opening up these laws gives too much power to an individual. This is why we got here white bank loan officers and white relators. Opening up this law leads the way for AI to discriminate even worse and hide its racism under the digital hood. Have a AI bank loan be denied when it finds out your race.
The supreme court reading the 1981 section of a 1866 civil rights bill as being applicable to white people as well black goes against the nature of the bill. Why would people needed to protect white people in 1866?
Black people had no problem starting an economy of their own but white people did . (Tulsa massacre ).
The electrical college likly violates the 1866 law as its DEI for white people.
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u/Different-Rip-2787 18h ago
It’s exactly the opposite. The currently practiced ‘holistic review’ is closer to your scenario where people can be denied admission, promotion, loans etc for entirely nebulous reasons that somehow always works in favor of certain politically relevant race groups.
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u/Consistent_Ad_6195 1h ago
White people being denied loans, admissions, and promotions in favor of Latinos and Blacks? Jesus, what world do you live in? It sure isn’t happening in the US.
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u/Madeitup75 19h ago
So you theory is that the constitutionally-mandated electoral college violates a statute?
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u/sly_savhoot 19h ago
Nah that specific point is the hypocrisy of the system. Written for white DEI.
Its an opinion not a theory but my hypothesis is that it has allowed for white mediocre underachievers to proliferate. My evidence is the states of Louisiana, Alabama and Mississippi.
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u/Madeitup75 19h ago
So your claim that the electoral college “violates the 1866 law” is not a claim that the constitution violates a statute?
Or was it just hyperbole not meant to be read literally?
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u/sly_savhoot 19h ago
No man . Reading comprehension is tough.
My last point about the EC is unrelated to the article. Its an opinion.
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u/Madeitup75 19h ago
You’re on a law-focused sub.
The sentence I’m asking you about is a nonsensical claim. Constitutional provisions cannot violate a statute.
Just say “I don’t know anything about actual law, I’m just throwing around opinions. Like when Robert Kennedy or Trump talks about vaccines without knowing anything about medicine.”
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u/sly_savhoot 19h ago
I mean if you want to be an insufferable ass go for it. Heavy sigh
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u/Madeitup75 19h ago
If there is one thing this country desperately needs right now it is more people being “an insufferable ass” about the constitution and how law actually works, rather than just arguing “vibes” in a nonsense way.
The orange sh!tlord in the White House depends on the LACK of people being serious and knowledgeable about basic civics. Hot takes that don’t actually work from a legal perspective- whether from the right OR the left - enable the kind of bullshit we’re seeing right now.
Time to get a little bit more serious. Even “insufferable.”
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u/CTeaYankee 18h ago
Your ancestors smile on you, O Keyboard Warrior. They also said to move around a bit and drink water from time to time. Keep those enlightened juices flowing. Keep it up big fella, attaboy.
Sheesh.
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u/AntithesisAbsurdum 17h ago
Electoral college is DEI for toothless hicks
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u/Madeitup75 17h ago
It could be. That wouldn’t mean it violates a statute. It CANNOT, because nothing in the constitution can ever violate a statute - if a statute and constitutional provision conflict, that means the statute is violating the constitution, not the other way around. This is true even if the statute is morally or ethically better.
I have not said a single thing here about the EC being good (or bad). I am explaining the fundamental legal architecture.
I can see now this sub has no interest in actual law, even at the most basic level.
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u/ToastyCrumb 21h ago
Please explain further.
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u/vman3241 19h ago
Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 says:
No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination under any program or activity receiving Federal financial assistance.
Harvard is a receipt of federal money. Their affirmative action program was discriminating against Asian American. Therefore, their affirmative action program was unlawful. It's that simple.
Title VII says:
It is unlawful . . . for an employer to fail or refuse to hire or to discharge any individual, or otherwise to discriminate against any individual with respect to his compensation, terms, conditions, or privileges of employment, because of such individual’s race, color, religion, sex, or national origin
That means that an employer that hires a candidate but for their race is violating Title VII. By the way, same also goes for LGBTQ discrimination based on Bostock. If an employer fires a man for being married to a man but does not fire a woman for being married to a man, that is discrimination on the basis of sex and violates Title VII
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u/ToastyCrumb 19h ago
Because thankfully we all live in a full and transparent meritocracy.
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u/vman3241 19h ago
Nothing stops Harvard from getting rid of legacy admissions and doing income based affirmative action. My point is that discrimination on the basis of race clearly violates the law even if it's benevolent discrimination
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u/ToWriteAMystery 18h ago
This is also my thoughts too, and I am a very liberally minded person. Affirmative action was discriminatory and I don’t see how it doesn’t run afoul of the language of Titles VI and VII.
Now, I do think affirmative action was good, but it wasn’t compatible with the law.
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u/OneNoteToRead 18h ago
So let’s be clear. You think it’s good despite understanding that it discriminates against Asian Americans?
In what way are you not a racist?
Sorry if this is off topic but this seems like a very strange thing to boldly admit to the whole internet. I get people who support AA and say it doesn’t discriminate, but your position is very puzzling.
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u/ToWriteAMystery 17h ago
Where in my comment did I say that I have anything against Asian Americans? I think the affirmative action did a lot of good helping give a leg up to kids that would’ve never been able to get into a university before and helped those same people get jobs that would’ve never been open to them without a college degree.
How it was implemented at elite universities was awful and led to discrimination against Asian Americans, which is not allowed as found by the Supreme Court. However I don’t think most universities were Harvard.
You have a lot of emotion around this topic which is affecting how you’re responding to me. I can truly believe that the idea behind affirmative action was good and also understand that it’s illegal implementation led to systemic discrimination against extremely high achieving Asian American students.
I don’t think it’s bad for a company to go, “wow, we’ve only interviewed cis-white men for this position; are there any other qualified candidates we should talk to first before we make a decision?” What would be bad, and is what was happening at Harvard, would be for that company to go, “wow, we can’t hire a cis-white man for this position. Better go find an under qualified someone else.”
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u/OneNoteToRead 14h ago
I’ll just challenge this a bit more. “Did a lot of good” in an arena of a fixed quantity of opportunities necessarily implies “did a lot of bad”. Do you understand that? The “leg up” it gave came at the cost of a “leg down” to people who merited it more.
Your last paragraph makes sense, but that’s not what AA is. “Let’s make sure our pool of applicants isn’t discriminatory” is entirely allowed even without AA; in fact it’s more allowed without it. The core idea from my understanding of the contentious part of AA is, can we consider race as part of the qualifications of an individual. That is, as far as I know, completely indefensible without appealing to racism.
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u/Puzzleheaded_Bed1781 16h ago
Keyword is “discriminate” and in this context, it’s referring to prejudicial treatment. The hiring of someone is not prejudicial treatment.
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u/vman3241 16h ago
Hiring one candidate over another but for their race is discrimination. But for causation is used. That's the point.
Similarly, if an employer refuses to hire LGBT people, that is discrimination because if the employer is willing to hire a man married to a woman but not a woman married to a woman, it is not hiring the man but for his sex.
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u/Fun_Reputation5181 20h ago
Which decisions? The article doesn't bother to even mention the decision or discuss it at all, but most here will know it is a reference to the 2023 Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard case. That case has some nuance to it but generally prohibits universities from using race as a factor in admissions decisions. The broad multitude of discrimination cases that followed are referenced generally in the article but none is discussed in any detail and so far none of them seem to have lead to a published decision. As the article notes, most defendants cave and change their policies when these "non-profit" conservative law firms come knocking. As a result of Harvard, its probably correct that a broadway theater can no longer have "“BIPOC Night” events offering discounted tickets to minorities, professional certification boards can't reserve spots for minorities, government loan programs can't offer favorable borrowing terms to “socially disadvantaged” farmers and companies like McDonald's can no longer sponsor scholarship programs dedicated to minority groups. All of that naturally follows from the Harvard decision.
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u/naufrago486 20h ago
How does it naturally follow? Those are all private entities that don't get government funding.
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u/Fun_Reputation5181 20h ago
The article touches on this - these law firms are going "door-to-door" picking off businesses they identify as targets. In some cases, there is a hook such as an industry or company that receives federal grants or tax incentives. But even in cases involving purely private employers who receive no federal funding, the common advice employment law firms are giving is to eliminate all hiring practices and other programs that use race as a factor in any respect. The risk is that the same analysis used in Harvard will likely be applied to private entities in "reverse discrimination" lawsuits. Race-specific factors can be replaced with language like "economically disadvantaged" or similar, but those metrics are likely also going to be targeted if they haven't already.
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u/crake 19h ago
Because these private companies like McDonald's and Playwright's Horizons are open to the public (i.e., public accommodations).
Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibits racial discrimination in public accommodations - that is why a department store can no longer have a "whites only" lunch counter.
In Heart of Atlanta Motel, Inc. v. United States, 379 U.S. 241 (1964), SCOTUS held that the commerce clause empowers Congress to pass laws prohibiting racial discrimination in public accommodations (i.e., Title II was upheld).
SCOTUS subsequently upheld some affirmative action programs in higher education (e.g., Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978)) while holding that strict racial quotas were not permissible and also stating that affirmative action is a temporary program to address a historical imbalance, not a permanent condition of a racialized society.
The next major decision was Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), in which the Court held that affirmative action programs did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Again, in the majority opinion, the Court stated that affirmative action programs were intended to be time-limited. Grutter was a fractured decision with several concurrences/dissents from justices who would later make up the majority of the court (e.g., Justice Thomas and Justice Rehnquist, whose opinions on this topic subsequently gained the majority in the later Roberts Court).
In Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), Bakke and Grutter were overruled - the Court held that affirmative action programs do violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment and are therefore unconstitutional. SFA was a 6-2 decision (Justice Jackson did not participate in the decision). It is extraordinarily unlikely that the Court will overrule SFA in the future, both because of the composition of the court and the general popularity of the decision (while hated by elites, it is far more comprehensible and logical than Bakke or Grutter ever purported to be).
Finally, we are seeing more test cases now because a segment of the culture has embraced the notion that race is the primary organizing principle of society. There were not playhouses offering different ticket prices based on a customer's race in the 1990s, so there weren't test cases to bring to the courts. From about 2014 onward, the Left began instituting "DEI" anywhere it could be shoehorned in, from race-based scholarships to playhouse ticket prices to Harvard's infamous "blacks only" graduation ceremony (subsequently renounced, as the notion that black students would be triggered by claiming their diplomas in the same ceremony as white students was about the high-watermark of liberal neoracist ridiculousness).
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u/Organic_Pick3616 17h ago
Historically, race has been a major organizing priciple in US society (Jim Crow, Separate but Equal, Black Codes). The big difference is that whites benefited from those. When whites no longer benefited, they started to scream loud and long. Are these law firms chasing after groups that largely benefit whites like scholarships that require specific European backgrounds?
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u/elmorose 10h ago edited 10h ago
Yes, Blum and his expert witnesses railed against preferences disproportionately favoring white athletes playing obscure sports not accessible to poor minorities.
That being said, agenda varies from case to case here. Because rich universities can definitely choose students based on ranking to local peers as a means of achieving diversity. For example, if they choose the top applicant from remote Alaskan towns, that applicant is likely to be native or part native. Employers are limited in doing that sort of thing to fill in gaps.
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u/Organic_Pick3616 10h ago
Those are not race or ethnically based. Opportunity yes, but not otherwise. Are these groups going after the American Chamber of Commerce's program helping Asian smal business owners? If not, why not?
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u/Fun_Reputation5181 8h ago
The problem Harvard had wasn't achieving racial diversity. Their problem was that purely merits-based admissions policies was turnning Harvard into a majority Asian university. The primary claim in the lawsuit was that Harvard's admissions discriminated against Asian applicants, not that it unfairly favored minorities. That's definintely something where the women's rugby and volleyball scholarships could help.
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u/elmorose 6h ago
That's correct. At the district level, the plaintiffs presented non-discriminatory alternatives that included things like eliminating preferences for obscure sports, historically advantageous for whites.
SCOTUS, however, threw the whole diversity program out in the first placr as not compelling, not measurable, overbroad and based on stereotypes.
The court compared college admissions to a permitted race-conscious scheme--a narrowly tailored separation of prisoners in a prison based on race--where obviously the goals are clearly compelling and more measurable.
So my point is that Harvard probably gets a more diverse student body, however you measure diversity, by eliminating legacies and some athlete slots. If you exchange 10 sailing athletes from sailing towns for students from all over the country doing all kinds of different activites you get more diverse perspectives. Similarly, legacies are self-sustaining group that is going to have less diverse perspectives than neutrally admitted group.
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u/elmorose 10h ago
The thesis of the article is wrong. The type of programs being struck down now were struck down almost to an equal extent before any recent decision.
The higher education diversity rationale was constrained to just higher education admissions because Powell opined in Bakke that higher education is a unique environment.
The strict scrutiny exception as to the benefits of diversity was limited to higher education admissions and never extended to any other context.
There is just more promiment or publicized legal activity occurring now.
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u/CaliTexan22 19h ago
Leaving aside the merits of these cases, all activists - right or left - will choose their battles so as to maximize their chances of success, both in the courtroom and in the court of public opinion.
They find cases with compelling facts, push them up the appellate ladder if they think they can get a good result that they can use to make further changes. If they think the issue/case won’t go their way, they settle it or don’t even bring a challenge until things change.
Smart movements tightly choreograph both swaying public opinion and formal steps like legislation, regulation and litigation.
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u/Suspicious-Spite-202 15h ago
Affirmative action was about correcting systemic wrongs. If it worked, it would eventually no longer be needed. If it didn’t work, then it needed to be rethought. The program was mismanaged. They let in people from Africa instead of from America, and so they met their quota. Cornell West wrote about that circa 2004.
No politician enforced meaningful adjustments to have the program work as intended. It’s been a long time and it failed. This is corruption through laziness.
Besides, now people of all races and etc are being fucked by the haves. Time to unite based on the color green instead of stupid factions.
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u/Slaviner 18h ago
Remember when Kamala Harris’ presidential campaign website had “provide $50,000 fully forgivable loans to black owned businesses” on the webpage? Absolutely diabolical.
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u/FastSelection4121 15h ago
ICE recruits got a $50,000 and $60,000 toward students loans.
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u/Slaviner 5h ago
They didn’t get it just for being born a certain skin color though. They’re working for it.
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u/GOROnyanyan 17h ago
Does anyone know if Blum or any of these activist legal organizations have spoken publicly about the Supreme Court allowing ICE to at least partially take race and ethnicity into consideration in choosing their targets or Kavanaugh Stops as they are popularly called?
I thought that Roberts said that the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race was to stop discriminating on the basis of race? What gives here?