The Most Blistering Lines From The Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Dissents

LOADING ERROR LOADING The Supreme Court’s ideological divisions were on full display Thursday as it handed down its ruling on affirmative action: All six conservative justices declared such programs unconstitutional, while all three liberals voted to preserve them. ‘Let-them-eat-cake obliviousness’ In a particularly searing portion of her dissent, Jackson accused the majority of ignoring “race-linked gaps that the law previously founded and fostered” — in other words, of ignoring reality. It will take longer for racism to leave us.” A tragic ‘Don Quixote’ comparison Jackson argued that the majority ignored affirmative action’s benefits, quipping that was “hard to do, for there is plenty.” She continued: “Ultimately, the Court surges to vindicate equality, but Don Quixote style — pitifully perceiving itself as the sole vanguard of legal high ground when, in reality, its perspective is not constitutionally compelled and will hamper the best judgments of our world-class educational institutions about who they need to bring onto their campuses right now to benefit every American, no matter their race.” ‘Success in the bunker, not the boardroom’ In a footnote, Roberts said military academies could be exempt from the ruling. Jackson responded: “The Court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom.” ‘Unelected’ officials ‘upend the status quo’ Critics of the Supreme Court have argued with renewed urgency in recent years that its conservative majority has been taking a sledgehammer to long-established rights and norms in an affront to the democratic process. As Sotomayor put it, “The six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law.” ‘The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated’ “Today,” Sotomayor wrote, “this Court overrules decades of precedent and imposes a superficial rule of race blindness on the Nation.