Sotomayor's words captured the importance of letting universities ensure truly equal access to higher education.
By
In a disturbingly
lopsided 6-2 vote, the United States Supreme Court once again became a willing
accomplice in the recent onslaught of attacks on 60 years of civil rights
progress.
Less than a year after
it effectively dismantled the Voting Rights Act of 1965, the Court ruled on
April 22 that voters may ban race as a factor in college admissions at public
universities.
The Court’s decision
curbed affirmative action and undermined a landmark 2003 ruling that affirmed the use of
race-sensitive admissions policies at the University of Michigan Law School
because of a compelling interest in fostering diversity in higher education.
It’s important to note
that this ban only singled out race. Other selective factors, such as alumni
status, athletic achievements, and geography remain in place. A federal appeals
court
subsequently ruled that Prop 2 violated the Equal Protection
clause of the 14th Amendment, rendering it unconstitutional. With their recent
ruling on Schuette v.
Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, a majority of the Supreme Court’s
justices allowed the 2006 amendment to stand.
Chief Justice John
Roberts and Justices Samuel Alito, Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Stephen
Breyer joined Justice Anthony Kennedy in concurring in the judgment. Having
worked on the case when she was Solicitor General, Justice Elena Kagan recused
herself. The two dissenting votes were cast by Justices Ruth Ginsberg and Sonia
Sotomayor, the Court’s most reliable civil rights defenders.
Sotomayor’s written
dissent is an exceptionally scholarly, eloquent, and impassioned argument in
defense of affirmative action. She methodically discredited the majority’s
legal justification for its decision by citing several previous cases where the
Court overturned attempts to change rules in ways that were detrimental to
minority voters. She also pointed out that the Supreme Court bears an
obligation to right historical wrongs and to expand educational opportunities
for those who have traditionally been locked out.
“Race matters,” she
wrote, “because of the long history of racial minorities being denied access to
the political process (and) because of persistent racial inequality in society
— inequality that cannot be ignored and that has produced stark socioeconomic
disparities.”
Mindful of Michigan’s
shameful history of segregation in higher education and of a significant
decline in minority enrollment and graduations since Prop 2 took effect,
Sotomayor concluded:
“The effect of [the Court's ruling] is that a white graduate of a public Michigan university who wishes to pass his historical privilege on to his children may freely lobby the board of that university in favor of an expanded legacy admissions policy, whereas a black Michigander who was denied the opportunity to attend that very university cannot lobby the board in favor of a policy that might give his children a chance that he never had and that they might never have absent that policy.”
We may have lost this
affirmative action battle. But as long as there are voices as clear and strong
as Sonia Sotomayor’s on the Supreme Court, I’m confident that in the end, equal
opportunity, equal protection and equal justice will prevail.
Six other justices made
clear how far from over the fight for civil rights remains in 21st-century
America. Sotomayor shouldn’t need to remind her colleagues what the world looks
like beyond their chambers. Yet she does.
“As members of the
judiciary tasked with intervening to carry out the guarantee of equal
protection, we ought not sit back and wish away, rather than confront, the
racial inequality that exists in our society,” the first Latina on the Supreme
Court wrote in her dissent.
We all need to sit up
now.
Marc Morial is the president and CEO of the National
Urban League and the former mayor of New Orleans. www.nul.org. Distributed via
OtherWords (OtherWords.org)