The Supreme Court is not the best vis-a-vis other branches of government, but it is certainly better than lower federal courts. We see a pattern in which three President Trump appointees refuse to join Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito in enforcing clear majority opinions on bad lower court rulings. I’ve been observing.
Shockingly, we continue to see this happening in race-based hospitalizations, despite the courts’ decisive rulings. landmark judgment In the case of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.
Lower courts continue to use the legal game of “catch them if you can” in defiance of the high court’s doctrine.
Supreme Court last year control 6-2 Race-based preferences violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in the Harvard admissions case, “An individual’s race should never be used against him in the admissions process,” and he , pointed out that favoring one race inevitably harms other races.
“College admissions is zero-sum,” Roberts wrote. “Providing benefits to some claimants and not others necessarily benefits the former group at the expense of the latter.”
The court’s decision was as clear as we’ve ever gotten from this panel of judges. We thought that all discrimination in admissions, especially in public schools, would be relegated to the ashes of history. However, the Fourth Circuit Court of Appeals found that Thomas Jefferson High School of Science and Technology, a well-respected public magnet school in Virginia, discriminated on the basis of “socioeconomic” factors. The policy, adopted by the Fairfax County School Board, was designed with the same outcome in mind as in Harvard’s case: reducing the number of Asian students and increasing the number of black and Hispanic students. It is clear that
The school was successful. In the first year after the new admissions policy was implemented, the number of students of Asian descent fell by 19%, while the number of black and Hispanic students increased fourfold. This is why the district court sided with the students and found direct evidence that the admissions process was racially motivated. However, the Fourth Circuit’s reversal, if passed, would provide a clear workaround to the Harvard decision and nullify the entire ban on race-based considerations.
Unfortunately, the Supreme Court refused The Asian parents appealed the Fourth Circuit’s decision. Alito and Thomas were the only two to publicly dissent. This is shocking, given that Roberts himself warned schools last year not to indirectly achieve affirmative action goals “through application essays or any other means.” He also cautioned that something he “can’t do directly” is important: consideration of applicants. lace – “cannot be done indirectly.”
In a sharply written dissent, Alito called his colleagues’ “willingness to accept the following extraordinary ruling” “difficult to understand.” Therefore, he warned, the Fourth Circuit’s gambit “is a virus that could spread if… “It was not immediately removed,” and as a result, “this decision should be wiped off the books.”
Alito went a step further and shamed his politically correct colleagues by hypothesizing that the races would be reversed.
Suppose that a white parent in a school district where 85% of the students are white and 15% black is dissatisfied with the fact that 10 out of 12 players (83%) on the public high school basketball team are black. Suppose a principal emails a coach and says: Let’s say, “We have too many black players. We need to replace some of them with white players.” And the coach emails back and says, “Okay, okay.” It would hurt the team, but if you insist, I’ll do it. ”The coach then sidelined the five black players and kicked them off the team for some contrived but ostensibly neutral reason.
Alito rightly observed that “I cannot imagine this court sustaining such discrimination,” which the Fourth Circuit’s logic would force it to do.
“According to the reasoning of the Fourth Circuit majority,” Alito wrote, “the percentage of black players who remain on the team (approximately 42 percent) exceeds the percentage of black players who remain on the team; “This action does not violate equal protection” schools. ”
It is difficult to know which of the remaining Republican appointees who did not sign the dissent agreed to sue, but apparently only one of Roberts, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, and Barrett wanted to sue. did not exist. .
Republican-appointed judges have balked at overseeing lower courts, highlighting the contrast in legal victories on the right and left. After the High Court redefined marriage for all humanity, no red state attempted to delay implementation of the judgment. Red states quickly collapsed into a belief in the “law of the land.”
In contrast to the successful gun, religious freedom, and affirmative action cases, lower courts continue the “get it if you can” legal game by trying to defy the high court’s doctrine in slightly different cases. . .
Democratic judges vigorously monitor their decisions, but Republican judges don’t want too many policy changes to flow to conservatives as a windfall of their decisions. As such, they allow negative rulings known to be unconstitutional to remain unchallenged at the lower court level for years. This is why the left wing can score first and goal forever on our 1-yard line. We have to win every time while they only have to put one pass into the judicial end zone.
