by William A. Jacobson at legalinsurrection.com
“JUSTICE JACKSON’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step…. A contrary, myopic world view based on individuals’ skin color to the total exclusion of their personal choices is nothing short of racial determinism …. Worse, the classifications that JUSTICE JACKSON draws are themselves race-based stereotypes…. “
Clarence Thomas wrote an epic and monumental 58-page Concurring Opinion in the Harvard/UNC case.
Did I say Epic. I meant EPIC!!!
Unlike Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson (KBJ), whose dissent read like a furious letter to the college newspaper or chants at a rally. Or a seminar on CRT. She talked about “lived experience” and the majority’s “let them eat cake” attitude. And the left loved it.
Justice Thomas was having none of it. But first he laid the foundation (emphasis added):
In the wake of the Civil War, the country focused its attention on restoring the Union and establishing the legal status of newly freed slaves. The Constitution was amended to abolish slavery and proclaim that all persons born in the United States are citizens, entitled to the privileges or immunities of citizenship and the equal protection of the laws. Amdts. 13, 14. Because of that second founding, “[o]ur Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting).
This Court’s commitment to that equality principle has ebbed and flowed over time. After forsaking the principle for decades, offering a judicial imprimatur to segregation and ushering in the Jim Crow era, the Court finally corrected course in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), announcing that primary schools must either desegregate with all deliberate speed or else close their doors. See also Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294 (1955) (Brown II ). It then pulled back in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003), permitting universities to discriminate based on race in their admissions process (though only temporarily) in order to achieve alleged “educational benefits of diversity.” Id., at 319. Yet, the Constitution continues to embody a simple truth: Two discriminatory wrongs cannot make a right.
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