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Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

latimes.com

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#31
post #20

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

The population of the US is roughly ~330M

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Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#33

What does this mean in practice?

Admissions departments will find proxies for race. The next year of Harvard freshmen will not be majority Asian. The admissions department won’t allow that to happen.

> Admissions departments will find proxies for race.

And that would be the same thing. If someone can prove it, it's illegal.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#34

What does this mean in practice?

Double-digit increases of Asian students at top tier universities, primarily coming from decreases of nonwhite students.

Probably a modest reverse version of that at the lower tier universities.

Love the policy change or hate it, that’s what’s likely to happen.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#35

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

[deleted]

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#36

I’ll need to read the opinion but why not eliminate consideration using all protected statuses (race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information)? Affirmative action is not just about race. It doesn’t make sense that you can discriminate on any protected status to begin with. In any case I doubt this will c…

The court tends to rule narrowly. If no one takes the case to the Supreme Court then they won’t decide on it.

I’m curious how this case would play out if some males applying to CalTech did this against female applicants. That said I’m not sure how much gender based affirmitive action there is in science/engineering today.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#37
post #28

I would like to see lotteries used for this type of thing, because they would be much easier to accept. You could have 10% or 20% percent of candidates chosen by lottery, or have a lottery for all candidates who have the minimum pre-requisites, etc. Some sort of randomness whould guarantee a diversity of candidates and would even span across dimensions which are not even considered currently.

A lottery doesn't guarantee randomness at all because the population is not evenly distributed. If you have 99 people apply who are white and 1 person apply who is black, the lottery is going to naturally favor white candidates by virtue of # of applicants.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#38
> Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.

But this is affirmative action. What did they strike down?

Also god damn I hate this supreme court for overruling their own decisions. Even the ones I would personally benefit from. This is going to ruin the court in the long run for partisan bullshit. If going to the court twice for the same issue can get you different decisions then the ruling of the court means absolutely fucking nothing. You might as well just continue your affirmative action program because the next time the court makeup might be different and they'll change their mind again.

This was already decided forty years ago https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regents_of_the_University_of_C...

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#39

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

The judicial branch does not legislate. It interprets existing legislation. In this case they were interpreting the 14th amendment to the US Constitution.

Now, they may not have interpreted it the way you or I would, and they may not have interpreted it correctly. But that is what they do.

Re: Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions

#40
post #20

Whatever your opinion about recent supreme court decisions, this has all underscored what has been true for a long time: Legislating via the judicial branch is a bad idea. If it only takes 5 out of 9 people to make laws for 600 million, it only takes one seat change to revert them. (Edit: sorry, 300 - pre-caffeine posting)

The population of the US is roughly ~330M

But don't forget to add corporations to the total, because they are people too according to SCOTUS.
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