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ZorbaTHut  2yr ago (text post)   45539 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of September 5, 2022

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Seems likely that if the conservative majority on the Supreme Court survives long enough to decide this case, and if they strike down affirmative action, it will almost certainly be effectively resisted by the universities. As with gun regulation, if SCOTUS leaves even the slightest loophole, they will fit their entire DEI/AA structure into the loophole, and there will have to be another multi-year court battle to decide that. If, miracle of miracles, Chief Justice Roberts actually reiterates his "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race." and uses absolute language with no loopholes, the colleges will rig their measures -- drop objective ones, make up new "objective" ones which are skewed to favored minorities, and use subjective ones. And then there will be more multi-year court battles, after which the cycle repeats. As long as they cannot actually be punished for doing this, they will.

I'm not so sure there's no way to enforce - couldn't non-compliance end up in lawsuits? I agree, but there will be SOME ability to prevent it after a decision against AA.

Sure, lawsuits. There's always lawsuits. But if they win the lawsuit they go on as usual, and if they lose the lawsuit they change their language a bit and STILL go on as usual. Until they can actually be forced to stop (e.g. by a court-appointed supervisor over their day-to-day operations) or the persons making the decisions can be personally punished, they can go on spending public (and student, which amounts to the same thing given the college financing situation) money to defend against these lawsuits.

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