Politics

Supreme Court hears arguments challenging use of race in college admissions

Published

5 months ago

October 31, 2022

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Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court before oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina on October 31, 2022 in Washington, DC.

Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images

The Supreme Court began hearing arguments Monday in two cases that challenge the use of race-based considerations to determine who gets admitted to American colleges.

The arguments, which are expected to continue for several hours, stem from lawsuits against affirmative action in admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

“Racial classifications are wrong,” the attorney Patrick Strawbridge said in his opening argument on behalf of the group Students for Fair Admissions.

“This court has always said that racial classifications are invidious,” Strawbridge responded to Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative who asked about defenders of affirmative action who say that taking race into account tells something about the “whole person” seeking admission to college.

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Students for Fair Admissions is seeking to overturn the Supreme Court’s ruling in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, which in 2003 found that colleges could consider race in their admissions in order to have diverse campuses.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor noted that the 14th Amendment, adopted after the Civil War, took race into account to help Black Americans get access to parts of society that were denied them during slavery.

“You’re assuming that race is the only factor that gets someone in,” said Sotomayor, a liberal justice referring to college admissions.

Strawbridge later said that Asian applicants have been disadvantaged by affirmative action policies that have benefited Black applications, a factor which he argued underscored the unfairness and unconstitutionality of those policies.

“Some races get a benefit, some races do not get a benefit,” he said.

Strawbridge said the use of race to determine who gets into a college is “inherently divisive.”

Sotomayor challenged Strawbridge to come up with any example in the court record where an applicant had gotten into college simply because of their race.

She and other liberal justices in their questions argued that race was but one of many factors in affecting how colleges determine who gets admitted.

Conservatives hold a 6-3 super-majority on the Supreme Court, and are expected to be open to the arguments for ending affirmative action.

The cases being argued are Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard, case No. 20-1199, and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina, case No. 21-707.

This is breaking news. Check back for updates.

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Politics

Amid Third Front buzz, Mamata Banerjee to meet Naveen Patnaik tomorrow

Published

7 hours ago

March 22, 2023

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West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee will meet her Odisha counterpart Naveen Patnaik in Bhubaneswar on March 23 amid discussions on the formation of a Third Front ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha polls.Though Banerjee prefers to call the meeting “a courtesy call”, as she will visit Puri on Wednesday after reaching Bhubaneswar on Tuesday, Trinamool insiders believe that a discussion on an alliance of regional parties is also expected. Patnaik, ahead of the assembly polls in the state, is maintaining equidistance with both the Congress and BJP, like the Trinamool Congress.

To take the discussion on the Third Front ahead, former Karnataka CM HD Kumaraswamy will meet Banerjee at her residence on March 24, Banerjee said ahead of her visit to Odisha. Trinamool leadership has made it clear that the party will keep an equidistant stand from both BJP and Congress and Banerjee will reach out to other like-minded parties.

“The regional parties are very competent. Whenever regional parties meet, we discuss the federal structure of the country and various other issues. The central government creates policies while the implementing authority is the state,” Banerjee said.Recently, Banerjee held discussions with Samajwadi Party (SP) chief Akhilesh Yadav, during SP’s two-day national executive meeting in Kolkata last weekend. Yadav had met Banerjee at her residence and discussed strategies for the coming Lok Sabha polls.

Yadav had said that ahead of the Lok Sabha polls, the regional parties are trying to create an alliance or Front and Banerjee is working towards it. Telangana CM KCR and the Bihar CM are also proactive about the alliance of regional parties, Yadav had said.

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Politics

Accusing ED of ‘spreading lies’, BRS leader Kavitha Kalvakuntla offers to submit mobiles

Published

9 hours ago

March 21, 2023

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Bharat Rashtra Samithi leader Kavitha Kalvakuntla on Tuesday appeared before the Enforcement Directorate (ED) for her third round of questioning in connection with the Delhi government’s now-scrapped excise policy.Before entering the ED office on Tuesday, Kalvakuntla, the daughter of Telangana chief minister K Chandrasekhar Rao, flashed some mobile phones kept in a transparent sheet to the media and said she was going to submit them to the ED.

She also wrote a letter to the federal agency stating that “these phones are submitted without prejudice to my right and contentions and larger contentions whether a woman’s phone can be intruded, in the teeth of her right to privacy”.

She further alleged “glaring act of malice on the part of the agency when it has chosen to make insinuations” against her in its first charge sheet filed last year in which the ED alleged that certain phones (allegedly used by her) were destroyed.

Responding to this charge, she has said: “It is baffling to note as to how, why and under what such circumstances agency made such allegations when I was not even summoned or asked any questions whatsoever.”

She said the accusations against her were “not only mala fide, misconceive but also prejudicial”. The BRS leader said she was submitting the phones to dispel any notion or adverse impression that the agency was allegedly trying to create.According to the letter, “deliberate leakage of the false accusation (by the ED) to the public has led to a political slugfest” wherein her political adversaries have been “flaunting the accusations, to accuse her of destroying the so-called evidence and causing great harm to her reputation and attempting to defame her and her political party”.Her letter added: “It is unfortunate that a premier agency like the Enforcement Directorate is becoming privy and party to these acts and sabotaging and sacrificing its sacrosanct duty of free and fair investigation at the altar of vested political interest”.

The BRS leader was questioned for over nine hours during her second round of questioning on Monday. She has challenged the ED summons in the Supreme Court. Her petition is slated to come up for hearing on March 24.

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