The Supreme Court ruled today in a 5-4 decision against school integration plans in Louisville, Kentucky and Seattle, Washington; the decision is a precedent that could be used against hundreds of similar diversity programs in public schools across the nation.

Chief Justice John Roberts summed up the majority opinion when he said, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Ironically, both sides of the court used Brown vs. Board of Education to bolster their opinions. The dissenting minority argued that forced integration and diversity plans were in accordance with the landmark 1954 ruling, while Roberts and the other four justices claimed that such attempts flew in the face of what Brown vs. Board of education meant. Clarence Thomas, the only black justice on the Supreme Court, offered this:

“What was wrong in 1954 cannot be right today. The plans before us base school assignment decisions on students’ race. Because ‘our Constitution is colorblind and neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens,’ such race-based decisionmaking is unconstitutional.”

It’s too bad Nate Gulley and his squadron of oppressed minority students weren’t around to accuse Thomas of “forgetting where he came from.” Of course, this doesn’t affect the University of Oregon, where we have our own little diversity plan, nor does it overturn the 2003 Supreme Court ruling that upheld consideration of race in college admissions.

Finally, here are a few irrelevant pieces of news I couldn’t help from mentioning:

• Elizabeth Edwards calls Ann Coulter on live TV. Ann is basking in the media attention that resulted from her latest verbal dirty bomb when she receives a surprise call from a certain Mrs. Edwards. Check out Coulter’s poker face, as well as her uncanny ability to spin the conversation into an injustice against her.
• Michael Moore comes off as a crusading populist in his movies, but the LA Times reports that it might just be all about the Benjamins.
• The Bald Eagle is off the endangered species list. I’m sure I’m the 6 billionth person to do this, but let’s take a moment to celebrate by letting the mighty eagle soar.

This entry was posted on Thursday, June 28th, 2007 at 17:30 by CJ Ciaramella and is filed under Law, National. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.