Diversity, Equity and Inclusion, RIP?
SCOTUS may have just dealt DEI a death blow..if conservatives will only use it.
When Barry Goldwater warned about affirmative action’s slippery slope in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, he was roundly criticized at the time. One of the leading architects of the bill, Hubert Humphrey, even said, “I will eat my hat if this leads to racial quotas.”1
Would you like fries with that, Senator?
To be fair, subsequent Supreme Court decisions, such as Griggs v. Duke Power, had more to do with the practice of preferential treatment based on race, ethnicity and sex.2 Griggs’ ‘disparate impact’ analysis fueled the drive for quotas that became so widespread in business, government, nonprofits and the academy, they had to be given a different name—diversity, equity and inclusion or DEI.
Yet, few could have imagined how toxic the obsession over identity politics would actually become, eventually resulting in a divisive embrace of ‘reverse discrimination.’ That, as Goldwater predicted, was inevitable once policymakers latched on to the belief that government could wave a wand and eradicate centuries worth of injustice overnight without creating new ones?
It can’t and two wrongs still don’t make a right.
Nevertheless, a veritable army of opportunists so abused law that every imaginable member of every imaginable group would soon be a plaintiff in one civil rights suit or another—except the proverbial ‘straight, white male.’
Until now, perhaps.
For years the Supreme Court dabbled around the edges of constitutionality dictated ‘equal protection’ under the law, especially in education3 In the Seattle school district case, Chief Justice John Roberts famously opined, “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”4
When the high court found the city of New Haven’s refusal to promote white employees, despite race-neutral exams, unconstitutional, ‘disparate impact’ was dealt a partial blow in Ricci v. DeStefano.5
Finally, in 2023, the majority crossed the Rubicon in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College when it ruled that race-based admissions are a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.6
That’s why Harvard is at war with the Trump administration. It simply refuses to comply with the law—whether an executive order restoring Title IX of the Education Amendments of 1972 to its original intent, or the Harvard decision itself.7