Full-court press prez
WASHINGTON — President Biden blasted the 6-3 conservative majority on the Supreme Court Thursday for ruling against race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
“This is not a normal court,” the 80-year-old president told reporters at the White House after a speech in which he encouraged universities to adopt more subtle ways of ensuring diversity.
Biden’s rhetoric was slammed by Republican attorney George Conway, who tweeted: “Too many people in this country for too long have believed that a rogue or abnormal court is any court that issues a decision they don’t like. And that’s deeply corrosive to the rule of law.”
The president, a graduate of the University of Delaware and Syracuse University’s law school, said “adversity should be considered, including a student’s lack of financial means” — describing a longtime counterproposal to race-based affirmative action that would disproportionately benefit African Americans, Native Americans and Hispanics.
Biden also quoted from Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion to suggest race can still play an indirect role in admissions.
“The court says ‘nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an application’s discussion of how race has affected his or her life . . . be it through discrimination or inspiration or otherwise.’ Because the truth is — we all know it — discrimination still exists in America,” he said.
Biden said his counterproposal “means examining where the student grew up and went to high school. It means understanding the particular hardships that each individual student has faced in life, including racial discrimination.”