SCOTUS Overturns Several Precedents, a conservative view
VIA SBINSIDER| June 30th, 2023
Affirmative Action and College Admissions
JFK in 1961, began the Affirmative Action regime with the idea of overcoming abiding racism in the old Confederacy and elsewhere. His quote was “race has no place in American life or law.” Enough Americans agreed so that more Federal Laws were passed (Civil Rights Act, 1964). Then, in 1978, the court ruled in the Bakke decision, which overturned the idea that race could be the primary criteria for admissions to a California Medical School. Bakke, a white male, argued that he suffered “reverse discrimination” as less-qualified students who were minority races were being admitted based on a defined quota system. The SCOTUS agreed.
In the ensuing years many such cases have made the SCOTUS. Most notably, in 2003, Arizona’s own Sandra Day O’Conner upheld by a 5-4 vote and she wrote the majority opinion that race still needed to be a factor in law school admission but added “The Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.”
It is has been 20 years and Justice Roberts dictum; to end racism, we have to stop discriminating by race, has become the law. The group that sued were students of Asian-American descent who were denied admission to Harvard despite their superior test scores and grades.
Arizona outlawed racial preferences practices in 2010. Despite this law, UA, ASU and NAU have a robust, diverse student body.
But the real problem here, but it is not said-everyone knows that Ivy League graduates and a few other elite colleges, are the factories for the Federal Government suppling the entitled, elitist, know-it-all lawyers, bureaucrats and regulators. Ergo, minority students believe they will be locked out of admission to the society of American Mandarins.
Incidentally, about 35% of Harvard’s freshman class is legacies-the parents or grandparents attended-so not based on merit or race. And, Harvard has a $42 billion dollar endowment which would allow the school to stop charging any fees virtually forever.
Student Debt mess, Obama’s screwup
In 2010, President Obama eliminated the federally guaranteed loan program, which let private lenders offer student loans at low interest rates. Now, the Department of Education is the only place to go for such loans. Of course, it was totally mismanaged and anyone who could breathe got loans they never could repay for degrees that are basically worthless in the employment market. Surprise! Huge numbers of non-payers with a total debt over $1Trillion dollars. This was the plan of the left all along. Give away taxpayer money to younger voters, barely ask for repayment and then try to give slackers debt relief-a government handout. Fortunately, the SCOTUS can read the Constitution which says and all powers of spending reside in the House of Representatives-not in the Presidency. The irony is the quotes of Biden saying he did not have the power earlier, and then Speaker Nancy Pelosi making the same point, made both look foolish and pandering.
The real education scam
Democrats have for years said college should be free. The colleges, who raise tuition every year precisely matching the increase in student loans and grants-amazing!-always get their money for delivering a product that is worthless in many cases. But, all the academics with degrees in Women’s studies, Black studies, English as a Reductive Marxist construct and so on and on vote 99% Democrat in every election. None of the overpaid college administrators or teachers are ever going to take a pay cut to reflect their failure. The chart that follows shows the obscene increases in college tuition over the past forty years!
Public Accommodation and religious freedom
In a 6-3 opinion delivered Friday by Justice Neil Gorsuch that was joined by the court’s five other conservatives, the justices said that the First Amendment’s free speech protections permitted the web designer, Lorie Smith, to refuse to extend her services for same-sex weddings. In past decisions, SCOTUS has ruled that a business cannot refuse service based on skin color or other apparent differences. In this decision, the court said a service which is a public expression violated the 1st Amendment in that web designs are a public expression of her work. The LGBT + backlash was predictable and unhinged. But on the other hand, suppose, that a gay web designer was asked to create a web site for a client who wanted to propose that gay people were condemned by God, evil and should be eradicated? Or, if a Jewish web designer was asked to create a website for a Holocaust denier or NEO-NAZI group? Of course, they should NOT be compelled to produce such content, a true conservative viewpoint and the correct one.
