Thread by @RichardHanania

Supreme Court: "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it." Even against white people and high performing Asians.

Harvard and UNC affirmative action programs struck down. 🧵 on decision. https://t.co/mv84W6TrxU https://t.co/EyGMcK4EO2supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf…
twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Supreme Court first blessed affirmative action in 1978.

In 2003, 25 years later, it said affirmative action would be needed for 25 more years.

SCOTUS: "Twenty years later, no end is in sight."

Harvard gave no timeline for it ending.

The Court says enough is enough.

SCOTUS begins by describing the Harvard admission system.

At the first step of the process, they consider race.

Then at the second step, they also consider race.

Finally, when deciding who to cut from admissions, they consider race.

The UNC process. First, each individual applicant gets an admissions officer to review their file, where they consider race as a plus factor. Then, a committee gets the applications, at which point it also considers race.

In a footnote, Roberts makes fun of Justice Jackson for trying to draw a statistical inference based on the fact that UNC rejected two well performing blacks over five years. He points out that if you don't cherry pick the data, the pattern of discrimination is clear.

At Harvard, below average black applicants (at the fourth lowest decile of academic achievement) were more likely to be accepted than Asians in the top 10% of applicants.

Among students in top 40%, blacks were 4x to 10x more likely to be admitted than Asians.

The Court has historically "invalidated all manner of race-based state action."

This is the "central purpose" of the Fourteenth Amendment.

The Supreme Court says equal protection "cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.”

Critical Race Theory rejected. Sorry Kendi.

"To manage these concerns, Grutter imposed one final limit on race-based admissions programs. At some point, the Court held, they must end. This requirement was critical, and Grutter emphasized it repeatedly."

The Court seems struck by the quotas forever position of the left. https://t.co/vHEDryYsX0twitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Racial classifications are supposed to meet a "strict scrutiny" standard.

Harvard and UNC talk about things like "diversity" and "cross-racial understanding." These concepts are too incoherent to even be considered under the strict scrutiny standard. They can't be measured.

The Court says even the definitions of "race" are incoherent. This is another reason affirmative action fails strict scrutiny.

Are South and East Asians the same? Why don't you consider Arabs? What are "Hispanics" exactly? Such a nonsensical system can't be justified.

During oral arguments, when the UNC lawyer was asked how Arabs are considered under their system, they responded they had no clue.

Harvard and UNC "would apparently prefer a class with 15% of students from Mexico over a class with 10% of students from several Latin American countries, simply because the former contains more Hispanic students than the latter."

When asked about the weird ways in which they categorize individuals by race, universities say "trust us."

Roberts responds: "Universities may define their missions as they see fit. The Constitution defines ours."

No deference is owed to institutions that want to discriminate.

A footnote mocks Justice Jackson for asking the Court to "defer to universities and 'experts' in determining who should be discriminated against."

The majority doesn't want to just trust the experts, it chooses to believe its own eyes.

Harvard tried to argue that they don't discriminate because race is not a "negative" for any group. It is only a "plus" for some groups. The Court is not having this.

Harvard also both claims race isn't important, and that it would be hurt if it couldn't use it. Illogical.

Affirmative action can not be justified because it relies on stereotyping, or the belief that you can understand people's opinions from their racial background.

The Court has previously banned racial balancing. But Harvard admits that every year it looks to see if it had a drop off of any minority group from the previous year, and if not it seeks to match previous numbers. What is this if not balancing?

The Court provides a helpful chart. Every year between 2009 and 2018, as percentage of admitted students

Blacks are 10-12%
Asians are 17-20%
Hispanics are 8-12%

What are the odds? Jackson says "trust the experts" that they're not really balancing.

Sotomayor's response to the balancing charge: well, between 1980 and 1994, the Asian numbers varied a lot! Roberts: why are you going back to the 1980s?

"For all the talk of holistic and contextual judgments, the racial preferences at issue here in fact operate like clockwork"

UNC: We don't engage in balancing, we just try to get the numbers of our university close to the demographics of North Carolina.

Look how long these people got away with this nonsense! Amazing they didn't die from embarrassment a long time ago.

UNC: In 2003, you said we get until 2028.

Supreme Court: We said affirmative action should end by 2028, not that you're guaranteed the right to discriminate until then.

Lol.

The dissents seem to have given up on diversity. They want to justify affirmative action as necessary to undo past discrimination.

Roberts: "They fail to mention that the entirety of their analysis of the Equal Protection Clause...has been considered and rejected before."

Sotomayor: Affirmative action should continue until racial discrimination ends.

Roberts: We never said that. In Grutter, we instead said six different times that they need to end before too long.

Roberts is scathing: "While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants, it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue....to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit." https://t.co/8iy8Ctviystwitter.com/i/web/status/1…

Roberts warns universities: Don't think you can just do the same thing through essays.

Thomas, concurrence: The Fourteenth Amendment was meant to be color blind. He rejects a view called “antisubordination," which says it's just about helping black people, and it doesn't matter if you discriminate against others in the process.

Thomas: Ever since Grutter, 20 years ago, I've been trying to figure out the supposed educational benefits of diversity. I still have no idea, despite universities having had half a century to develop their arguments.

Biden administration tried to argue that diversity in college was linked to "cognitive development." Being around black people improves your IQ! Thomas sounds skeptical.

Thomas says the only time a state can consider race should be "to provide a bulwark against anarchy, or to prevent violence." Separating prisoners based on race to prevent riots counts, but very few other things.

Thomas responds to the idea that you should just trust universities: "it is error for a court to defer to the views of an alleged discriminator while assessing claims of racial discrimination." Harvard excluded Jews before. UNC has also been racist. Why should we trust them?

Thomas says history has vindicated his previous views that racial discrimination needs to be completely prohibited. Universities have been getting more aggressive, blatant, and unapologetic about their intent to discriminate and do so forever.

Universities claim that their form of discrimination is "benign." They are fools, and history should have taught us better. Segregationists thought the same thing. And they always kept begging not to upset things right now, but to give more time.

Sotomayor: Mismatch theory is debunked.

Thomas: No, it's not.

Whose experts and social science gets listened to depends on who's in the majority.

Thomas: Sotomayor believes you can help blacks and Hispanics through affirmative action while not harming Asians. "This simply defies mathematics."

Thomas describing the views of Jackson: We live in a racist society where race determines everything, so defer to experts so they can fix it for us.

Didn't know "trust the experts" would be such a contentious part of the decision!

Twitter to SCOTUS pipeline.

Thomas says sure there are racial gaps, and sure there is racism. I don't care. The Constitution says the government must treat everyone equally.

Thomas says Jackson wants "to label all blacks as victims. Her desire to do so is unfathomable to me."

Her view on the causes of inequality "is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers."

Wow.

More Thomas: "What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives."

Brings up "trust the experts" again.

He really, really hates Jackson's worldview.

Thomas won't stop talking about how much Jackson sucks.

Her worldview is one where "experts" go around giving us favors or discriminating based on race, then one day lead us to “'march forward together' into some utopian vision."

Gorsuch concurrence is interesting and a hint of where the Court might go next. Wants to make clear that this isn't just the Equal Protection Clause, it's also about Title VI. This would be much broader, and apply to all government funded activities, not just college admissions.

Gorsuch is pilled on the fakeness of the left's racial categories.

"Where do these boxes come from? Bureaucrats. A federal interagency commission devised this scheme of classifications in the 1970s to facilitate data collection."

"Asian" includes 60% of the world's population. They got grouped in with Pacific Islanders based on lobbying, as I've pointed out before.

Hispanic? Also very, very fake. Whites and blacks too I guess.

People used to say that Bostock for Gorsuch was a tip about what he wanted to do with affirmative action and other kinds of discrimination. That position seems vindicated. He's an absolutist on opposing all racial discrimination as inconsistent with the Civil Rights Act.

Gorsuch cites text messages between UNC admissions officers.

"[P]erfect 2400 SAT All 5 on AP one B in 11th [grade].”

“Brown?!”

“Heck no. Asian.”

“Of course. Still impressive.”

Kavanaugh is obsessed with the time limit. Goes and lists all the times and different opinions where justices in 2003 said universities only had 25 years.

Sotomayor tries to argue that the Court should have ruled in a way consistent with crazy decisions of the Warren and Burger Court. One of them invalidated a school district plan based on choice because most whites and blacks chose to go to schools with their own race!

This Sotomayor dissent, BTW, is all about blacks. They don't care about Asians nor Hispanics. Left-wing jurists believe in a black-centered Constitution, with everyone else as an afterthought. It's a very constrained vision, not really wedded to any greater principle.

Sotomayor: Allowing affirmative action is about academic freedom, because different races are necessary to have a free flow of ideas or something. Have universities been doing a good job of that?

Sotomayor: "It is thus unsurprising that there are achievement gaps along racial lines, even after controlling for income differences."

Uh...

Blacks need affirmative action because they're disciplined in school more, which clearly must have nothing to do with their behavior. Also, more likely to be "involved" with the criminal justice system, which must just select people based on race.

Sotomayor says that blacks at UNC need affirmative action because of buildings named after racists.

Also, because a black student was turned away from a fraternity party once, and a Latina felt lonely.

Sotomayor says Harvard needs affirmative action because its researchers have promoted "race science."

The author of The Bell Curve taught at Harvard, therefore blacks can be held to a lower standard.

Sotomayor says Harvard also has statues, buildings, and scholarships dedicated to racists.

If Harvard tore all the statues down, would that mean affirmative action is no longer necessary because they solved racism?

How embarrassing.

Sotomayor: Harvard and UNC should have won because they had more experts testifying for them.

Sotomayor: It's theoretically possible that whites or Asians could have benefited from their race too, although there's no evidence for that and I just made it up.

On the exact same page, Sotomayor both says

1) Not considering race would significantly decrease black and Hispanic populations at Harvard
2) Not that many get into UNC because of race (not true)

Both are taken as evidence that affirmative action should be allowed!

Sotomayor says you should ignore the fact that Asian numbers have stagnated for 20+ years, and look at the fact that they increased since the 1980s (when there were almost no Asians in the US).

Sotomayor says that the majority doesn't understand statistics like she does.

If they understood the concepts of a mean and normal distribution they would understand why Harvard has the same numbers of Hispanics, blacks, and Asians each year.

Sotomayor says it's not fair that the majority is just making the same arguments conservatives used to make in the minority. Nothing much has changed but the composition of the Court. On this she is correct. These are the same debates, just a different side has more justices now

Sotomayor: "the Court overrides its longstanding holding that diversity in higher education is of compelling value."

The majority doesn't say it as explicitly, but that's also my reading of the decision.

Sotomayor notes the decision appears to go further than even what the plaintiffs asked for. SFFA didn't dispute diversity was a compelling state interest. Roberts wrote that the concept is incoherent and can't even be measured. This is a very strong decision.

Sotomayor says race is just one factor of many, like they try to get students of diverse political ideologies.

Ah yes, the famous affirmative action bump for conservatives at elite universities. That's something that definitely exists.

Sotomayor: "By singling out race, the Court imposes a special burden on racial minorities for whom race is a crucial component of their identity."

I certainly hope so.

Sotormayor cites a black graduate of UNC who says the texture of her hair is very important to her.

Sotomayor brings up "The Talk", citing a previous dissent written by Sotomayor.

Sotomayor worries now that universities will abandon subjective criteria all together, and that they will just admit based on grades and test scores out of fear of being sued.

How does Sotomayor answer the references to "25 years" in Grutter? She says that it only meant that universities engage in "periodic review" of their policies.

Sotomayor tries to argue that "Asian American" is actually a real category because some "Asian" activist group told her so.

Sotomayor says that mismatch theory is incorrect because the Supreme Court has three justices of color.

This dissent is the best argument against affirmative action I've ever seen.

Sotomayor says diversity is necessary for national security, argues a lack of diversity hurt the US in Vietnam because it made minorities into cannon fodder for white generals (?).

According to Sotomayor, diversity does the following:

*Strengthens democracy
*Makes the justice system more fair
*Helps move STEM forward
*Makes children better at learning
*Wins wars
*Makes doctors better
*Improves customer service
*Makes the media better at communication

Sotomayor ends by telling the majority you may have won this round, but you will not silence the calls for diversity, and this decision will only highlight your impotence as history sweeps you away.

Jackson: "History speaks. In some form, it can be heard forever." Blacks are poorer than whites, thus history and racism.

Jackson says blacks are 13% of the population, but only 5% of lawyers. Also, black businesses were more likely to fail due to Covid, and blacks have more student debt, and get more prostate cancer. Plus they're more likely to have asthma. And they're fatter too.

Jackson: "For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die." Woah, white doctors must be butchers.

Jackson: UNC and Harvard aren't obsessed with race. Clarence Thomas is the one obsessed!

I thought Thomas must've been caricaturing Jackson, but no, she really says that our job is to sit back and listen to experts who will help us "march forward together" so we can achieve racial equality.

Jackson tells the inspiring story of a former slave describing what freedom meant to him.

You have to keep reminding yourself that this is a case about whether blacks should be able to get into schools with lower test scores.

Fin.

Final thoughts: people are trying to be too clever, saying it won't matter or will make things worse. The dissenters are apoplectic and stuttering about obesity rates and universities have fought this battle for a reason. Universities are going to have to be a lot more… twitter.com/i/web/status/1…