Now that the Supreme Court has ruled against the legality of using racial preferences to ensure a “diverse” student body, some school officials have said that they will comply. But are they to be trusted? In today’s Martin Center article, Rick Hess and Greg Fournier say “no.”
They write:
In short, it’d be a mistake to trust colleges to honor the plain meaning of the Court’s ruling. After all, even prior to last year’s ruling, the Supreme Court had never okayed what Harvard and UNC were doing. Colleges had taken the Court’s vague allowance in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that race could be a “plus factor” (and in Grutter v. Bollinger that consideration of race could be a tool for increasing “diversity”) as a green light to engage in the kind of wholesale discrimination that the Court had explicitly rejected. It’s safe to assume that we’ll see admissions offices pushing the envelope — confident there will be no oversight, pushback, or consequences in the insular world of elite higher education.
Moreover, the vast leftist political establishment is gung-ho for preferences, thinking that it buys them political support.
Hess and Fournier argue that states need to legislate against preferences, saying:
State and federal lawmakers can prohibit colleges from discriminating on the basis of race or ethnicity — even in clever workaround ways like those discussed above — by making compliance with the SFFA ruling a condition of receiving public funds (including aid, grants, and loans). After all, public aid for higher education is conditional on all manner of things, including compliance with civil-rights law. Legislators should clarify precisely what’s impermissible and detail the penalties for violating the law.
Also, we will need to continue the battle in the courts.