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I think it is clear that Gorsuch and Kavanaugh have been laying the groundwork to engineer an opinion that all of the titles of the Civil Rights Act protect white and asian people from discrimination as surely as they protect black people. That was their long game in Bostock, which held that trans people are protected under the Civil Rights Act via the syllogistic logic that the CRA bans discrimination on account of sex, so (roughly) it is a violation to treat a man who wears a dress differently from how you treat a woman who wears a dress. I predicted that this was their intent in Bostock, and I think it was Gorsuch who indicated as much during the oral arguments in the affirmative action case -- I can't remember his exact phrasing but he invoked Bostock and asked why the same logic shouldn't apply to the same language in a different title of the CRA.
If SCOTUS clarifies the Civil Rights Act as protecting all races equally, then every tool that has been used to police covert discrimination against black people over the past century (sting operations, disparate impact theories, indications of animus, etc.) could in theory be used to police covert discrimination against white/asian people ("holistic" applicant reviews, rhetoric about "dismantling whiteness," etc.).
At that point all that is needed is a sufficiently motivated executive. Ron DeSantis in particular has proven apt at using the tools pioneered by civil rights activists to effect conservative change, and has been pretty sharp with other types of executive power to curtail liberal excesses.
So I don't know what odds I give it of coming to pass, but it does seem like the pieces are falling into place for a conservative campaign to dismantle affirmative action across the entire ambit of the Civil Rights Act, which is much broader than just higher education -- and to fight back against a slide toward ethnic spoils.
The biggest threat to this campaign is if the GOP nominates Trump instead of DeSantis. Trump can be counted on to fumble the opportunity, as he does everything. At this point I am hoping that fate intervenes to secure the nomination for DeSantis.
Are there rulings saying it doesn't? I'm not familiar with the subject but I would have guessed that it is already interpreted that way but the selective enforcement happens at some other stage of the process.
Grutter v. Bollinger which is one of the two cases that established the current standard is explicitly laid on the idea that race conscious programs to help "underrepresented minority groups" are a temporary measure. And says "that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."
SCOTUS has suspended the constitutional rights of whites on this issue for 19 years and counting pretty much. We'll see if they change their mind this time.
Right, I was wondering if he was referring to something other than affirmative-action itself. But I guess the affirmative-action carve-out is already broad enough that it can be used to justify most relevant forms of discrimination against whites and asians. Compared to employment it doesn't much matter whether restaurants are allowed to refuse to serve white people.
I was thinking about how the lawsuit against Youtube regarding their employment discrimination against white/asian men was apparently considered worth attempting, but that's probably because the methods used were so overt (like the recruiter plaintiff being told to "immediately cancel all Level 3 (0-5 years experience) software engineering interviews with every single applicant who was not either female, Black or Hispanic") that they thought it might fall outside the carve-out. Plus looking at the lawsuit it's all based on state-level laws. (Though there's a mention of the plaintiff telling them "it violated state and federal law".)
Note that lawsuit just kind of vanished into the system, which happens often to such "reverse" discrimination lawsuits.
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Did that lawsuit ever go anywhere? It just vanished from the news.
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Trump might well use people who burnished their conservative credentials in the Abbott and Desantis governments to actually do the governing while he shows up in photo ops.
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But it won't. If the Supreme Court puts out a ruling that says "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race. And by the way, we aren't fooled by the 'Asians have bad personality' crap, George Wallace could have come up with that one, so cut it out.", the people in charge of all those tools will simply ignore it. Their allegiance is to AA/antiracism/DEI first and to the institutions they serve a distant second. Just like with Heller and Bruen, the people (university administrators, alphabet-agency bureaucrats, and lower court judges) who have to change their behavior to implement the decision simply will not, and the Supreme Court will be powerless to do anything about most of it. A few more cases might make it up to SCOTUS, but all SCOTUS can do is issue strongly-worded opinions. And eventually SCOTUS will turn left and AA will be officially allowed again.
Even President DeSantis can't solve this because he can't just fire the bureaucrats.
President DeSantis can investigate these universities for racial discrimination and take away their federal funding if they're discriminating.
He could direct the Department of Education to investigate. They would investigate and find the universities had done nothing wrong except maybe not enough blacks and Hispanics were admitted.
Is the Dept of Education under the executive? If so can't he just fire everyone and place his own people there?
No, he can only fire the political appointees, not the civil servants.
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I'm pretty sure Trump did this kind of thing when he was in office. Keep firing the secretary of a rebellious department until they get the message. Didn't seem to work.
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