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-   -   United States Supreme Court upholds MI voter ban on affirmative action (https://www.pokecommunity.com/showthread.php?t=324596)

twocows April 23rd, 2014 6:47 AM

United States Supreme Court upholds MI voter ban on affirmative action
 
http://news.slashdot.org/story/14/04/23/0128245/supreme-court-upholds-michigans-ban-on-affirmative-action-in-college-admissions
http://www.scotusblog.com/2014/04/divided-court-upholds-michigans-ban-on-affirmative-action-in-plain-english/

I'm not a lawyer, so the following interpretation of the ruling might not be entirely correct.


In a 6-2 ruling (Kagan did not participate, possibly because of prior involvement before her appointment to the Supreme Court), the SCOTUS upheld the Michigan voter-approved (58% assenting to 42% dissenting) ban on affirmative action in the state, overturning a district court ruling that the ban was unconstitutional.

Justice Kennedy, writing for the plurality (joined by Roberts and Alito), suggested that the decision of how to deal with these race issues should be left up to the voters and that courts do not and should not have the power to overrule the voters' decision.

Justice Roberts joined in the plurality opinion but also filed an additional concurring opinion that found some fault with the dissenting opinion written by Justice Sotomayor and joined by Justice Ginsburg, suggesting, among other things, that the opinion implied bad faith of those on the other side of the debate.

Justices Scalia (joined by Thomas) wrote a separate concurring opinion that suggests that the Kennedy opinion did not go far enough. The Scalia opinion suggests that the legal reasoning that the lower court used in their decision should, itself, be overturned.

Justice Breyer also wrote a separate concurring opinion that, among other things, suggested that state universities had the wrong legal reasoning for affirmative action.

Justice Sotomayor (joined by Ginsburg) wrote a particularly strong dissent that argued that her colleagues misunderstood the issue and that the amendment approved by Michigan voters was too strong of an action. Sotomayor suggested that if Michigan voters had a problem with affirmative action, the correct legal course of action would have been to petition the boards of the state universities or elect different members to these boards. She goes on to suggest that passing the amendment raises the bar for changing the decision too high, which uniquely disadvantages racial minorities. The opinion also goes into a discussion of the context of race in today's world and why it is still an issue, in a seeming challenge to the voters who approved the amendment.


What do you all think about this? I live in Michigan and remember the amendment quite well; I was just barely not old enough to vote on the issue, but would have (and still would) vote to approve the amendment.

There are two major issues at play here. First is whether affirmative action itself is right or wrong. I personally think that affirmative action is the wrong way to solve the right issue: introducing bias into the system isn't the way to solve problems of racial equality. In the words of a 2007 statement by Justice Roberts, "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race;" what affirmative action does, in effect, is introduce more discrimination on the basis of race, only in "the other direction," as it were.

The other issue is whether voters should have the right to repeal affirmative action. The big question here is whether repealing affirmative action is an abuse of the democratic process to disadvantage minorities. I don't think it is. I see affirmative action as an unfair advantage for minorities; it takes what should be a question of merit and changes it into a question of "first, what color is your skin?" I think it's unfair, and while I know some people will disagree, I think there's more than enough legitimate debate on the issue that it is fair to leave the question to voters.

As for whether it "raises the bar too high," as suggested in Justice Sotomayor's dissent, I don't believe that's relevant and it may even be untrue. It is and should be the right of the people in a democracy to hold a direct popular vote on issues like this regardless of whether the dissent may be of lower means. Justice Sotomayor seems to be saying that it would be harder to get a repeal measure on the ballot because those who would propose it are disadvantaged financially. I still think even in that case, the public should still have the right to vote on the issue; perhaps the solution there is to make it easier to get things on the ballot. But is what she said even true, though? There are people of high financial means on either side; while it may be true that there are less middle class folk and more lower class folk who would favor affirmative action, those aren't the people organizing the campaign behind getting these issues on the ballot. The very group that argued against the amendment here (BAMN) is, itself, quite well-funded. There are plenty of rich folks on both sides of the debate, even if in aggregate, the numbers might be lower on one side. I don't think her argument here holds water and it seems that some of the other justices don't think it does, either.

Oryx April 24th, 2014 4:53 AM

I find it amusing in a way - the whole point of affirmative action is to assist people that are marginalized (usually minorities) by the system in succeeding in life. It's amusing that a majority of people in the state can vote it out, because the point of it is to protect minorities. Ironic, you could say.

Which leads me to believe that although the Supreme Court didn't say anything explicit about the rightness or wrongness of affirmative action (correct me if I'm wrong on that), they said something nonetheless by agreeing that it's not protected like discrimination is; no state would be able to vote to make discrimination legal, even if the state was overwhelmingly racist white people that could get a majority.

As far as affirmative action itself, I honestly have no problem with it, because of the state of college admissions in particular. I feel like often the argument against affirmative action assumes uniqueness on the part of each student, which is unrealistic when we're talking about tens of thousands of students; it's expected in that case that the school will have multiple groups of students of similar achievement, similar academics, and similar extracurricular activities that will all likely do the same in the school. At that point, it does not matter which one of those they admit; it becomes a lottery, basically. I don't see the problem in picking between two equal students, picking the Hispanic student for the sake of increased diversity on campus, allowing for a complete experience and a rounded student body that can deal with different people.

I do find diversity to be a good because it leads to people being more likely to consider views that are different from their own; I always consider the study where subjects looked at pictures of people and then talked about their own biases towards fat people. Those that had looked at people of all body types were more tolerant. This points towards an exposure effect when it comes to diversity, which makes it a good in itself.

It's also worth noting that affirmative action isn't just minorities or racial, but that it also is influenced by socio-economic status and even at times area of the country you live in. Any affirmative action policy based solely on race is illegal and the University of Michigan had already gone through the courts once over affirmative action and was forced to adjust in the 90s.


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