June 29th of last year may not hold any significance for most Americans upon first thought. However, for many current and future college students, it reigns as the day that the Supreme Court effectively struck down the use of affirmative action in college admissions, contributing to even greater levels of inequality amongst marginalized groups.
Affirmative action has been hotly debated and contested across the aisle for decades, especially amongst conservatives. Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has become one of its fiercest loathers, despite seemingly benefitting from it in his own college days. In the ‘70s when Thomas was entering college, Yale Law School had a stated goal that around 10% of the incoming class would be students of color in order to commit to “better” diversity standards and be a part of affirmative action policies to ensure marginalized communities received better representation in society [1], as very few POC were apart of the student body. However, Thomas allowed his partisanship views toward the programs to take the lead in his decision last June.
This seems to be a common theme amongst the Supreme Court Justices nowadays. There is less actual law, judicial review, and stare decisis (adhering to precedent) than there is partisanship and personal vendettas, when it should undoubtedly be the other way around. As a largely conservative court, with only three members leaning liberal, most decisions for the next number of years will be in the hands of right-leaning individuals who are coming for everything that activists have, throughout the century, dedicated their lives to fighting for.
We saw it first with the overturning of Roe v. Wade in the Dobbs decision in June of 2022, which unleashed an immense amount of damage to women across the country as they were told by the justice system that they do not own their own bodies. This led to some states enshrining abortion rights in their constitutions, with many red states taking it upon themselves to put in place strict guidelines or attempt full-out bans on the process itself. This does not stop at abortion policies, though. We have now seen states weaponize the rhetoric from the Dobbs case to come after birth control and IVF treatments.
As someone who read the 2022 Dobbs decision when it was released, I saw the implications put forth in Justice Thomas’s concurring opinion when he explicitly stated, “In future cases, we should reconsider all of this Court’s substantive due process precents, including Griswold, Lawrence, and Obergefell.” [2]. In other words, every decision that has contributed to equality progress in the United States could be at stake. While this was only one justice's take on this case, it should not be looked at lightly. Rumors spread for months that SCOTUS was going to take on Roe and many doubted it, and look where we ended up.
After Dobbs, the overturning of affirmative action occurred only a year later. Another attack on the rights of United States citizens.
It is hard to say what other monumental decisions could be overturned in the future, or if any of them even have precedent to make it to the highest court in America for a ruling. However, it is obvious that the six conservative justices will continue to use their personal views to guide whatever decisions they make. Whilst that may make Republicans happy now, there is no doubt that it will result in a tragedy to our already struggling public confidence in the justice system.
If anyone thought the Supreme Court would stop at affirmative action, it’s time to wake up.
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