Supreme Court: Colleges can’t consider race
Justices ban affirmative action’s role in admissions, but Biden says ruling should not ‘be the last word.’
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
The court’s conservative majority effectively overturned cases reaching back 45 years in invalidating admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively.
The decision, like last year’s momentous abortion ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade, marked the realization of a long-sought conservative legal goal, this time finding that race-conscious admissions plans violate the Constitution and a law that applies to colleges that receive federal funding, as almost all do.
Those schools will be forced to reshape their admissions practices, especially top schools that are more likely to consider the race of applicants.
Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
From the White House, President Joe Biden said he “strongly, strongly” disagreed with the court’s ruling and urged colleges to seek other routes to diversity rather than let the ruling “be the last word.”
Besides the conservative-liberal split, the fight over affirmative action showed the deep gulf between the three justices of color, each of whom wrote separately and vividly about race in
America and where the decision might lead.
Justice Clarence Thomas — the nation’s second Black justice, who had long called for an end to affirmative action — wrote that the decision “sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina, wrote in dissent
Court
ity with the very hot and humid heat,” said weather prediction center meteo- rologist Bryan Jackson. The forecast is for temperatures that feel like 109 degrees — with 101-degree heat and sti- fling humidity.
On Wednesday, the low pressure system was parked over New Engl nd and because winds go count- er-clockwise, areas to the west — such as Chicago and the Midwest — get smoky winds from the north, while areas east of the low pressure get southerly hot winds, Jackson said.
As that low pressure sys- tem moves on and another one travels over the central Great Plains and Lake Supe- rior, the Midwest gets tempo- rary relief, Jackson said. But when low pressure moves on, the smoke comes back.
“We have this carousel of air cruising around the Mid- west, and every once in a while is bringing the smoke directly onto whatever city
ayou live in,” said University of Chicago atmospheric scientist Liz Moyer. “And while the fires are ongoing, you can expect to see these periodic bad air days and the only relief is either when the fires go out or when the weather pattern dies.” The stuck weather pattern is “awfully unusual,” said NOAA’S Carbin who had to look back in records to 1980 to see anything even remotely similar. “What gets me is the persistence of this.”
Why is the weather pattern stuck? This seems to be happening more often — and some scientists suggest that human-caused climate change causes more situations where weather patterns stall. Moyer and Car- bin said it’s too soon to tell if that’s the case.
But Carbin and Canadian fire scientist Mike Flannigan said there’s a clear climate signal in the Canadian fires. And they said those fires aren’t likely to die down anytime soon, with nothing in the forecast that looks likely to change.
Nearly every province in Canada has fires burning. A record 30,000 square miles have burned, an area nearly as large as South Carolina, according to the Canadian government.
And fire season usually doesn’t really get going until July in Canada.
“It’s been a crazy crazy year. It’s unusual to have the whole country on fire,” said Flannigan, a professor at Thompson Rivers University in British Columbia. “Usually it’s regional ... not the whole shebang at once.”
Hotter than normal and drier air made for ideal fire weather, Flannigan said. Warmer weather from climate change means the atmosphere sucks more moisture out of plants, making them more likely to catch fire, burn faster and hotter.
“Fires are all about extremes,” he said.