With Thursday’s rulings on affirmative action in college admissions and workplace religious freedom, the Supreme Court triumphantly reaffirmed our nation’s fundamental values.
For decades, elite universities public and private — like the University of North Carolina and Harvard, the schools in the case — have used race as a key admissions criterion.
Ostensibly, it’s to diversify student bodies and redress past wrongs.
But in practice, it means a massive new wrong done, mainly to Asian American students who were disproportionately denied admission despite far better grades and standardized test scores.
It was the same ugly story of Jews in American higher ed in the early decades of the 20th century: Hard-working, high-achieving kids (often children of immigrants) excel by the proclaimed standards of our elite institutions, only for those institutions to drop those standards once “too many” of the wrong kind of student starts getting in the gate.
Worse still, there’s no evidence this new injustice actually did any good.
Yes, it advanced a shallow, “headcount” diversity. But it shoehorned unprepared students into high-pressure learning environments.
So issues of “mismatch” — where those unprepared students fail to thrive in and stay with tougher disciplines, like engineering or pre-med — persist.
Naturally, lefties blame this too on racism (not realizing that it’s their racism at fault).
As Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, “Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” so “universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
He added: “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Hear hear.
Hear hear, as well, for the court’s ruling in favor of Gerald Groff. The evangelical USPS mail carrier asked not to work on Sundays for religious reasons; superiors eventually rejected his request and he was disciplined for following the precepts of his faith. Groff resigned and brought suit.
The Supremes held that Groff merited an accommodation (as it did not involve undue hardship for his employer) — and struck a blow for people of all religions whose duties conflict with their faiths.
Indeed, the groups filing amicus briefs for Groff ranged from the Council on American-Islamic Relations to the American Sikh Coalition.
Freedom of religion is as core a tenet of this nation as equal treatment under the law.
These two decisions are blows for liberty and real equality — not the specious kind progressives fight for.
This story originally appeared on NYPost
