OPINION:
The Supreme Court of the United States has completed another session. The left is beside itself, bitterly disappointed that the Constitution has been adhered to, contrary to the cultural PC push of the moment.
SCOTUS found Affirmative Action to be unconstitutional, contradicting the 14th Amendment. Freedom of religion, part of the 1st Amendment, was upheld. The Court upheld the Constitutional separation of powers by finding the Biden administration’s plan to pay off more than $400 billion in student debt with tax dollars was never authorized by Congress, the place any and all spending must start.
What is most disturbing is as politicians and media pundits comment on the various decisions, it becomes apparent how few actually understand the three branches of government, their unique co-equal roles and the importance of adhering to the Constitution of the United States rather than of the political winds of the moment.
Civics 101 appears to have been skipped by some very high-profile people.
One of the best examples may be by a vote of 6-3, the Supreme Court ruled that university admissions programs that use affirmative action and other race-based admissions criteria are unconstitutional and violate the 14th Amendment.
At Harvard University, there was a multi-step admissions process including initial reviews, scoring of the application, committee reviews and more. Race was considered at least four different times during the established process.
According to data from the National Study of College Experience, the impact of racial consideration was to effectively reward or penalize student applicants according to their race. The study uses SAT scores as an example. A perfect score on the two-part SAT is 1600. If you’re Black, you effectively got a bonus of 310 points. Hispanics got a bump of 130 points. Asian students were actually penalized 140 points simply because their DNA showed a different ethnicity.
Getting accepted into any number of colleges and universities can be challenging. Specifically at Harvard, the number of exceptionally qualified applicants far exceeds the number of available seats. In their effort to choose students based on skin color, an African American student in the 40th percentile of their academic index was more likely to be accepted at Harvard than an Asian student in the 100th percentile. Dramatically lower qualifications, but due to skin color, the Black student would get the nod.
That amounts to racial discrimination, clearly prohibited by the 14th Amendment. The majority of the Supreme Court wrote, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
The newest member of the Supreme Court, however, saw it differently. Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote, “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” she continued, ”but deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
When Brown Jackson was up for confirmation from the United States Senate for her seat on the highest court in the land, detractors accused her of being an activist judge, that is, someone who tries to legislate from the bench rather than simply interpreting the Constitution. If there was any doubt about that claim, it was erased by her comments on the Affirmative Action case.
“The only way out of this morass - for all of us - is to stare at racial disparity unblinkingly and then do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together, collectively striving to achieve true equality for all Americans,” Jackson wrote.
That comment is legislative in nature. It doesn’t look at the Constitution. It looks at her perception of cultural issues and problems and then conjures up a proposed fix. That’s not her job.
Winsome Sears, a Black woman who was elected as the 42nd lieutenant governor of Virginia, thought that maybe Brown Jackson’s own experience led to her opinion. “What you have is a justice who was chosen because she’s Black and because she’s a woman.” Sears isn’t wrong. President Biden himself laid out the female criteria well before he nominated Brown Jackson. Men were not even considered. Sears’s comment suggests that a Justice that was chosen as a diversity hire would support the concept, regardless of what the Constitution says.
VP Kamala Harris gushed about the young justice’s opinion, “I encourage you to read it because she is a beautiful writer who is compelled by logic and a knowledge of history and a clarity of thinking about where we have been as a country and where we have the potential to go,” Harris said during remarks at the Global Black Economic Forum in New Orleans.
Again, the lack of understanding of the role of the Judicial Branch, this time by the Vice President of the United States, is staggering. Knowing and weighing where we have the potential to go isn’t the job of the Supreme Court. Understanding the intent of the Constitution is.
The Supreme Court’s most experienced Justice, Clarence Thomas, was having none of his colleague’s nonsense. “So Justice Jackson supplies the link herself: the legacy of slavery and the nature of inherited wealth. This, she claims, locks blacks into a seemingly perpetual inferior caste,” Thomas wrote. “Such a view is irrational; it is an insult to individual achievement and cancerous to young minds seeking to push through barriers rather than consign themselves to permanent victimhood.”
In his comments on the opinion, Thomas points out, rightfully so, how the 14th Amendment to the Constitution is a “race-neutral text.”
After the flurry of SCOTUS opinions with which she disagreed, NY Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said, “The Supreme Court has not been receiving the adequate oversight necessary in order to preserve their own legitimacy.”
Oversight? In AOC’s world Congress would oversee the Supreme Court. Good lord, can we please require that in public schools students be required to learn at least the basics of the US Government, like the Constitution, the Amendments and the roles of the three branches of government? Maybe today’s children who might someday be a Supreme Court Justice, Vice President or a Member of Congress will at least understand the laws on which we exist.
- Tim Constantine is a columnist with The Washington Times.
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