Thomas McKenna of the Washington Free Beacon compiles the most interesting quotes from last week’s U.S. Supreme Court ruling against the use of race in college admissions.
1. Chief Justice John Roberts: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
2. Justice Clarence Thomas: “Justice Jackson would replace the second Founders’ vision with an organizing principle based on race. In fact, on her view, almost all of life’s outcomes may be unhesitatingly ascribed to race. … This lore is not and has never been true. Even in the segregated South where I grew up, individuals were not the sum of their skin color.”
3. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson: “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”
4. Justice Neil Gorsuch: “The words of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 are not like mood rings; they do not change their message from one moment to the next.”
5. Thomas: “Justice Sotomayor apparently believes that race-conscious admission programs can somehow increase the chances that members of certain races (blacks and Hispanics) are admitted without decreasing the chances of admission for members of other races (Asians). This simply defies mathematics.”
6. Jackson: “For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.
…7. Roberts: “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. In its view, this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit.”
