The US Supreme Court has closed the judicial course, dealing a heavy blow to the agenda of President Joe Biden and rights defenders in general. If a year ago it was the repeal of the ruling that legalized abortion at the federal level, this week the rights of the LGTBI community and university students were on the table.
On Thursday, the country’s highest judicial body ended positive discrimination for racial issues in universities, a quota system based on the race of candidates that was intended to open the door to access to minorities such as African-Americans and Hispanics, with a historically much lower than white students at universities across the country.
The Supreme Court concluded that both Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Constitution by resorting to race as a factor in the admissions process, a conclusion drafted by Chief Justice John Roberts and supported by the five conservative justices of the organism. The three progressive magistrates opposed it.
“Many universities have wrongly concluded that the cornerstone of an individual’s identity is not the challenges overcome, the skills built, or the lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that decision,” says one part of the sentence.
Trump called the decision “a great day for America.” Biden called it a “major disappointment.” “It wasn’t perfect, but there’s no doubt that it helped bridge new opportunities for those who, throughout history, have often been deprived of the chance to show how fast they can progress,” said Michelle Obama, the former first lady of the USA.
Affirmative action on racial grounds in universities was key during the movement for African American civil rights and the end of racial segregation in schools in the 1950s. Seven decades later, the disparity is still evident. In public universities in California such as UCLA or Berkeley, where positive discrimination does not exist, black students represent only 5% of the total student body.
It has also been the week of the end of the student debt forgiveness that Biden sponsored at the time of the pandemic. This cancellation of the debt in a country where studying Law, Architecture or Journalism can far exceed $200,000 for tuition alone, is the end of a program that was intended to forgive up to $20,000 per student. On Friday, Judge Roberts ruled that Biden needs the express consent of Congress to take such a step.
In response to the court’s ruling, the president announced that his administration will seek another path to provide some student debt relief, which is based on a different law than the one to which the now-defunct student loan forgiveness program was tied.
The other decision of the Supreme that has raised blisters is the one related to the rights of the LGTBI community. The high court sided with a Christian graphic designer, Lorei Smith, who has refused to design websites for gay weddings. Judge Neil Gorsuch indicated that Smith’s refusal is protected by the First Amendment of the United States Constitution, which shields freedom of expression and religion.
The contrary argument came from the progressive Sonia Sotomayor, who pointed out that it is the first time in the court’s history that a company has been granted the constitutional right to “refuse to provide services to members of a social minority.”
Donald Trump did a remarkable job of perpetuating his legacy beyond his four-year term. In total, he nominated 234 justices at different levels of the US judicial system, three on the Supreme Court, consolidating a conservative majority that has made it a difficult week for Biden.
Supreme Court seats are for life and with the entry of Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett – all of them nominated by Trump – the balance has tilted decidedly towards the Republicans. The president also believes that it would be a mistake to try to increase the number of judges because it would generate an even bigger political battle. However, he believes that this Supreme “is not normal.”
The only victory this week for the progressives was in electoral matters. The Supreme Court halted Republican ambitions, which sought to change the way elections are conducted in the US. Conservative lawmakers in North Carolina sought to exercise absolute authority to draw electoral maps as they saw fit without judicial oversight, helping them win elections more easily.
According to the criteria of The Trust Project