The US Supreme Court’s two Black justices sparred over the meaning and impact of race in dueling opinions on the majority’s decision to curtail affirmative action programs at universities.
(Bloomberg) — The US Supreme Court’s two Black justices sparred over the meaning and impact of race in dueling opinions on the majority’s decision to curtail affirmative action programs at universities.
Justice Clarence Thomas accused Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson of having a “race-infused world view” that “falls flat at each step,” in an opinion concurring with the court’s decision on Thursday, which gutted the use of race in college admission decisions at the University of North Carolina and Harvard College.
Thomas said individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments.
“What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them,” he said. “And their race is not to blame for everything—good or bad—that happens in their lives.”
Jackson responded to Thomas in a footnote of her 29-page opinion dissenting from the court’s decision. She wrote that “Justice Thomas’s opinion also demonstrates an obsession with race consciousness that far outstrips my or UNC’s holistic understanding that race can be a factor that affects applicants’ unique life experiences.”
Read More: Supreme Court Rejects Use of Race in University Admissions
She said Thomas doesn’t dispute, nor could he, the origins and continued existence of race-based disparity “yet is somehow persuaded that these realities have no bearing on a fair assessment of ‘individual achievement.’”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina on the court, wrote the main dissent for the court’s liberals and read it from the bench in the courtroom — the first time that has occurred in the past four years. Writing on behalf of Jackson and Justice Elena Kagan, Sottomayor blasted the majority opinion and said race is just one “small piece of a much larger admissions puzzle where most of the pieces disfavor underrepresented racial minorities.”
“In a society where opportunity is dispensed along racial lines, racial equality cannot be achieved without making room for underrepresented groups that for far too long were denied admission through the force of law, including at Harvard and UNC,” Sotomayor write.
She tried to provide universities with some guidance going forward.
“To be clear, today’s decision leaves intact holistic college admissions and recruitment efforts that seek to enroll diverse classes without using racial classifications,” she said, adding that colleges and universities “can continue to consider socioeconomic diversity and to recruit and enroll students who are first-generation college applicants or who speak multiple languages.”
–With assistance from Patricia Hurtado.
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