Subscribe to Receive the Daily Report

Tuesday, July 11th, 2023

The Federalist Society Just Won Its 40-Year War on Affirmative Action

Author:     Michael Avery and Mark Brodin
Source:     truthout
Publication Date:     8 July 2023
 Link: The Federalist Society Just Won Its 40-Year War on Affirmative Action
Stephan:  

The principal failing I see with Democrats is that they do not seem capable of playing a long game. The christofascist Republicans and the oligarchs who own them, in contrast, understand this strategy very well, as the recent decision on Affirmative Action reveals. This article shows how over 40 years Republicans played their long game first rigging the Supreme Court with corrupt christofascists, and then getting the racist decision they wanted.

Guests in the audience await the arrival of U.S. Vice President Mike Pence during the Federalist Society’s Executive Branch Review Conference at The Mayflower Hotel on April 25, 2023, in Washington, D.C.
Credit: Drew Angerer / Getty

On June 29, the Supreme Court upheld a challenge to affirmative action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina and put an end to race-conscious measures to overcome discrimination. The Federalist Society, an ultra-conservative legal organization, was the central force behind this decision. In immediate terms, the opinions that killed affirmative action were written by the six justices who are or have been members of the Federalist Society, the conservative majority on the court. More significantly, the decision was based on precedents that Federalist Society lawyers had created over the past 40 years.

Chief Justice Roberts, long an opponent of affirmative action, wrote the opinion for the court in which all the conservative justices joined. Justices Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh wrote concurring opinions to articulate their individual concerns. Collectively they rejected diversity in education as a permissible justification for […]

Read the Full Article

2 Comments

  1. Robert Masters on Tuesday, July 11, 2023 at 4:32 am

    I listen last night to Monday’s Eleven Hour on MSNBC and don’t remember the name of individual but he stated what the court did around affirmative action was the correct move … he might not have agreed with their motivations?

    He said, regarding college education, the issue was not diversity but greater availability to all. He threw out a lot of stats. One being that poverty was growing faster among whites than others of color. He suggested taking monies earmarked for student loans reduction and providing it to universities who agree to yearly increase the number of admissions, which over the long term would eventually reduce the cost of entrance.

    I am not sure I truly captured the essence of what he said but if you listen to last 5-10 minutes of Monday’s Eleven Hour, you can experience for yourself.

    Either way, I felt he was saying something I had not heard before and required a deeper inquiry into the merits of what he was offering.

  2. Bert Leysath on Tuesday, July 11, 2023 at 6:14 am

    “I’m not a member of any organized political party…. I’m a Democrat.”

    “Democrats never agree on anything, that’s why they’re Democrats. If they agreed with each other, they’d be Republicans.”

    Will Rogers