Biden Blasts an 'Extreme' SCOTUS Ruling on Affirmative Action, but There's Just One Problem
The rectitude or constitutionality of a court ruling is not determined by its political popularity in the moment, thank goodness. Let's start right there. But in a commencement address at a prominent HBCU over the weekend, President Joe Biden chose to assail a recent Supreme Court decision striking down race-based 'affirmative action' in college admissions as the work of "extremists." Not quite a year ago, in a 6-3 ruling, SCOTUS "severely limited, if not effectively ended, the use of affirmative action in college admissions on Thursday...the justices ruled that the admissions programs used by the University of North Carolina and Harvard College violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which bars racial discrimination by government entities," according to SCOTUS Blog's summary. This outcome struck many Americans as sound and just because, as Chief Justice Roberts succinctly put it in a separate 2007 ruling, "the way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
One can agree or disagree over whether the majority got this case right. I think they did. But whether their decision was "extreme" is a separate question. In pandering to his audience, Biden employed the word 'extremists' to refer to the authors of a judicial ruling that is supported by a large majority of the American people. It's fair game to disagree with and criticize some policy or result that is favored by more than two-thirds of the public. But if you're on the one-third side of that equation, it's inaccurate and deeply out of touch to refer to the other, popular side as 'extreme:'
Nearly seven-in-ten Americans called the 2023 SCOTUS action mostly a good thing, while less than a third said the opposite. As you can see, within that sweeping majority were 52 percent of black Americans, 63 percent of Asians, 68 percent of Hispanics, and 72 percent of white people. 'Extremists' all, Mr. President? I'll note that this survey was taken months after the decision was handed down. The predicted backlash, for which many in the media were rooting, didn't materialize. Biden also applied that pejorative label to DEI critics (while substituting 'equality' for the leftist-preferred 'equity,' the latter of which often upends equality in favor of discrimination). Well, the list of 'extremists' seems to be growing:
Americans' views opposing racial discrimination in college admissions has been consistent for years. In 2019, we highlighted a Pew study showing that nearly three-quarters of respondents believed race should not be used as a factor at all in admissions decisions. That coalition included sizable majorities across all racial demographics. A few years later in 2022, another national poll also found a similar supermajority opposed to racial affirmative action in this realm. The Supreme Court finally dumped this unconstitutional practice, which also happens to be widely disliked. Some people remain on the wrong side of the law, the wrong side of public opinion, and -- arguably -- the wrong side of history. One of them is, at least for now, the President of the United States. Don't forget, after SCOTUS issued its ruling on this matter last year, his spokesperson insisted that racial discrimination was an "important constitutional right." I'll leave you with another deceitful pander by the president during the same speech:
Biden has been lying despicably about the Georgia law, under which turnout records have been broken, and it's clear that he has no intention of stopping.
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