Federal Judge Says West Point Can Continue Using Race in Admissions

West Point

A federal judge allowed the U.S. Military Academy at West Point on Wednesday to continue considering race as a factor in its admissions process.

Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the same group whose lawsuits against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina prompted the Supreme Court to overturn affirmative action in June, sued West Point in September. U.S. District Judge Philip Halpern, a Trump appointee, declined to issue a preliminary injunction blocking the military school’s use of race, noting in his 27-page ruling that it is currently “mid-admissions cycle.”

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Ohio U.S. Senator JD Vance Introduces Bill to Ensure Universities Comply with the Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling

U.S. Senator JD Vance (R-OH)  introduced a bill to ensure colleges and universities comply with the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling on affirmative action in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard.

In June, SCOTUS determined that affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, overruling a 2003 opinion that race could be a determining factor in the college admissions process.

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Commentary: Three Observations and Predictions About Affirmative Action in Universities Moving Forward

Following the recent Supreme Court decision overturning race-conscious admissions, certain sections of the media have adopted an alarmist tone, fueling doomsday predictions. Others are keen to celebrate the end of discriminatory practices that educational institutions have adopted for nearly 60 years.

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Federal Lawsuit Targets Race-Based Government Grant Decisions Alleged to Discriminate Against White and Other Business Owners

In the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling striking down affirmative action in college admisssions, a San Antonio-based government program that allegedly uses race-based preferences to hand out federal grants faces a federal discrimination lawsuit.

The lawsuit, filed this week by the Wisconsin Institute for Law & Liberty (WILL), could spark a national re-examination of such taxpayer-funded, race-focused initiatives.

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Ohio College Employees Could Be Held ‘Personally Liable’ for Violating Affirmative Action Ban: Attorney General

Ohio higher education employees “will face personal risk” if they violate the Supreme Court ban on considering race during admissions, state Attorney General Dave Yost wrote in a recent letter.

His office won’t be able to protect public colleges and universities if they act counter to the ruling, Yost wrote, according to The Columbus Dispatch.

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Watchdog Group Reports on Ohio State University College of Medicine ‘Anti-Racism’ DEI Practices Post-Supreme Court Decision

A comprehensive report by an organization that seeks to protect health care from discriminatory ideology has published a report that finds Ohio State University (OSU) College of Medicine is steeped in teaching medicine through the lens of the diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) agenda, and notes the school will need to examine its admissions processes to align with the Supreme Court’s recent affirmative action ruling.

The report, by Do No Harm, is released in the wake of the Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, which struck down affirmative action policies in school admissions.

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Commentary: 10 Reasons Why Affirmative Action Died

The end of affirmative action was inevitable. The only surprise was that such intentions gone terribly wrong lasted so long.

First, supporters of racial preferences always pushed back the goal posts for the program’s success. Was institutionalized reverse bias to last 20 years, 60 years, or ad infinitum? Parity became defined as an absolute equality of result. If “equity” was not obtained, then only institutionalized “racism” explained disparities. And only reverse racism was deemed the cure.

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Constitutional Law Center Urges over 150 Medical Schools to End Race-Based Admissions Following Supreme Court Decision

A nonprofit law center whose mission is to defend the constitutional rights of Americans has sent a letter to more than 150 medical schools throughout the country, calling upon them to end their race-based admissions policies in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action.

Liberty Justice Center, which won a major victory for First Amendment rights in June 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that non-union government workers cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of working in public service, has now announced efforts to inform the schools of their “legal obligation to end race-based admissions policies” in response to the Court’s recent ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College. 

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Commentary: SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision Ignores Elephant in the Room

Growing up in the Jim Crow South, my parents grew up dreaming of a world where they didn’t have to use “colored-only” restrooms, sit in the back of the bus, attend segregated schools, and could sit in restaurants together with other Americans – regardless of their race, creed, or nationality.

They dreamed of equality for all. Yet, almost 70 years after the Supreme Court struck down “separate but equal,” the recent decision to strike down affirmative action makes it clear that many black progressives like Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson – who benefited from the Brown v. Board of Education decision – still view the issues of race and equality through rose-colored glasses.

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Commentary: Two Americas Collide at the Supreme Court

When President Biden fumed that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action ruling is “not normal,” he spoke more truth than he may have intended. It is certainly not normal nowadays to acknowledge, even implicitly, that discrimination against whites is possible, or even wrong. The Supreme Court blasted the vaporous pretexts that elites have used to justify this invidious scheme, which has carried on indefinitely, feasting on countless dreams without satisfying a bottomless hunger of unquantifiable grievance. The sentimental and, arguably, self-serving wailing of the dissenters, particularly Justice Jackson, draws from that same source.

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Harvard Facing New Civil Rights Complaints After Affirmative Action Ruling

Following a landmark ruling from the Supreme Court effectively ending the practice of race-based preferences in college admissions, Harvard University is facing new civil rights challenges over its practice of legacy admissions.

As reported by The Hill, the Ivy League university is now facing complaints from the Lawyers for Civil Rights (LCR), a left-wing group representing black and Hispanic groups based in the New England area. LCR’s complaint claims that “each year, Harvard College grants special preference in its admissions process to hundreds of mostly White students — not because of anything they have accomplished, but rather solely because of who their relatives are.”

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Defiant Harvard Vows to Continue to Use Race in Admissions Decisions

Harvard University said it plans to continue to use race as a factor in admissions in the wake of the 6-3 Supreme Court decision last week that ruled affirmative action enrollment decisions are unconstitutional.

A June 29 memo to the Harvard community from President Lawrence Bacow and more than a dozen deans and provosts cited a line in the ruling that states colleges and universities may consider in admissions decisions “an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.”

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Constitutional Experts Welcome Supreme Court’s Takedown of Affirmative Action but Warn of Universities’ Attempts at ‘Workarounds’

Many of those who are applauding the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision Thursday that struck down affirmative action are also warning that universities that have been steeped for decades in “equity” and “diversity” ideology are not likely to go quietly.

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Commentary: SCOTUS’ Decision on Affirmative Action Could Spell Big Trouble for ESG’s ‘Diversity, Equity and Inclusion’ Hiring Quotas

It’s a simple ruling: “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

On June 29, the Supreme Court affirmed Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, 42 U.S. Code § 2000d’s prohibition on racial discrimination in federally funded programs, including higher education, at both public and private universities, in the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision.

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Supreme Court Ban on Affirmative Action Expected to Prompt ‘Workarounds’ to Favor Some Races

Two decades ago, the Supreme Court purportedly put limits on racial preferences in college admissions: no stereotyping of minority viewpoints or policies that “unduly harm” non-minorities, plus a 25-year ticking clock to wind them down.

Not only is there “no end in sight” to race-conscious admissions with five years left, but selective colleges can’t even explain how courts would evaluate the constitutionality of their programs under the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, the Supreme Court ruled Thursday, casting a pall over the use of race in settings far beyond higher education.

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Biden Education Secretary Claims Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling ‘Takes Our Country Decades Backward’

Secretary of the U.S. Education Department Miguel Cardona reacted to the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down the use of race in weighing college admissions with the claim the ruling “takes our country decades backward” because such discrimination based on the color of skin has served as “a vital tool that colleges have used to create vibrant, diverse campus communities.”

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Universities Seek Ways to Skirt the Supreme Court’s Likely Ban on Race-Based Admissions

Universities are searching for ways to maintain racial quotas ahead of a likely Supreme Court decision blocking affirmative action.

With the Supreme Court soon to issue a ruling in a pair of cases questioning the constitutionality of affirmative action, which multiple justices appeared ready to rule against during oral arguments, universities are developing plans to maintain the current racial composition of their student bodies without explicitly using racial preferences in the admissions process. Schools have floated ideas such as making testing optional, giving greater weight to students’ socio-economic backgrounds and recruiting based on geographic area.

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Commentary: After Affirmative Action

The betting odds are that the Supreme Court will soon rule against affirmative action. It is worth asking how we got here, and what we should do about it.

Why is affirmative action in jeopardy? The main reason, ironically, might be the increasing ethnic diversity of the United States. In 1960, the U.S. was roughly 88% white and 12% black. The census category “Hispanic” did not yet exist. Similarly, the U.S. did not have a separate “Asian” category for the less than one million Americans from various nations in Asia, though the 1960 census had separate boxes for some, but not all, Asian countries. Today the U.S. is 61% white and dropping. Among American children, the white/nonwhite population is rapidly approaching 50-50.

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Commentary: Affirmative Action Is a Thought Experiment

Imagine for a moment that beneficiaries of affirmative action were randomly selected. Suppose instead of applying affirmative action by race, we randomly assigned every person a number between one and five. Colleges would reserve portions of enrollments so that people with a “one” would only compete against other ones for a reserved number of slots. Likewise, those with a “two” would compete against each other for slots reserved for twos. And so on. 

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Campus Diversity Movement Takes Off in Surprising New Directions

by John Rosenberg   Ever since Justice Powell’s lone opinion in Bakke allowed the camel’s nose of “diversity” under the anti-discrimination tent, controversy has raged over preferential treatment awarded to college applicants of certain races. Just as hurricanes often change direction after landfall, the diversity movement has recently taken off…

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