Bullshit Abounds
From an MSNBC article....
"A half century of desegregation law _ and racial tension _ was laid bare for the Democrats hours before they met. In a 5-4 decision, the Supreme Court clamped historic new limits on school desegregation plans."
Utter crap. SCOTUS actually used Brown v. Brown and the 14th Amendment to make today's ruling. There were no limits established; rather the opposite. Desegregation was upheld but racial imbalances, incorrectly applied, were shot down.
This was a correct decision as anyone would reading the 178 page opinions and ruling would surmise.
6 comments:
This court seriously scares me. both Alito and Roberts swore they believed in maintaining precedence. These rulings change almost a century of law.
What is truly ironic is that in one "free speech" rule, roberts didn't like what the kid said, so even though the kid was OFF school property, he lost his right to free speech.
But question funding for attack ads - well that's free speech, by golly.
DISGUSTING!! These justices are business whores.
Yeah, I gotta agree on the "Bong Hits" ruling. In fact, probably to your horror, most conservative websites also were puzzled by that pair of rulings.
But, back to the main issue, tread carefully. I encourage you to read both the majority and dissenting opinions before deciding that this was a rollback of civil rights and desegregation. It wasn't. The ruling was very narrowly framed.
If you don't want to read the actual opinion, in a nutshell, the majority opinion also stated that racial standards were not needed in school systems that had never practiced segregation. Such as Seattle's.
The following is why I created this post with the title "Bullshit Abounds".
The media sees any racial decision as impacting segregation. It's a tremendous oversimplification in this case. All else being equal parents should have the right to put kids in the best school that they have access to. This is the framework of what the Seattle school system allows except where the race of the kid, simplified to white or non-white, interferes with their concept of racial balance.
Seattle could not demonstrate to the court the specific advantages or disadvantages of limiting school choice on race and, therefore, lost.
Read Justice Stephen Breyer's scathing 78-page dissent.
I disagree that Seattle schools didn't prove their point. I think these judges have an agenda and it didn't matter how much merit there was, they were going to vote this way.
Where are the righties complaints about activist judges? Why aren't they complaining now?
Hey, I happen to like 5-4 decisions. It shows everyone was thinking very hard.
As to activist judges, I think the term is used for justices who order new laws to be written abd that's not the case here.
As to "agenda", I don't know where you are getting this from. If there was an agenda, the earlier Grutter decision would have turned out different.
Hey, don't listen to my analysis.
Go to some of the more reputable legal sites like Volokh, SCOTUSBlog, and others and get their take on it. Almost all educated commentary defends the decision.
Suze, read this from one of the amicus attorneys involved with the case...explains it better then I am, apparently:
From http://www.scotusblog.com/movabletype/archives/2007/06/commentary_a_na.html
Because the assignment plans in Seattle and Jefferson Co. did not take race into account as one of several factors designed to attain a broad exposure to diverse people, cultures, ideas and viewpoints, the rationale that was upheld in Grutter does not apply here. A finer point must be put on this, however. The Court said that the plans at issue used only binary classifications; e.g., black/other and white/non-white. By so doing, there is no way the districts could attain the “diversity” that they claim they are pursuing. So, Grutter does not apply because of the crudeness of the districts’ classifications (a failure of strict scrutiny’s “narrowly tailored” prong), not because the educational benefits of diversity apply to grade schools’ in equal measure as the benefits that diversity bestows upon a diverse law school student body (the “compelling state interest” prong of strict scrutiny). Thus, five justices agree that the use of race as a dispositive and mechanically applied factor in public education is unconstitutional. This is so even if race is not the first or second factor being used to make a particular decision. As long as race ends up being the final “tiebreaker” it will be held an unconstitutional use of race.
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