



The majority of Americans approve of the Supreme Court's decision striking down affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
According to a new ABC News/Ipsos poll, 52% of Americans approve of the decision while just 32% disapprove — an overwhelming 20-point difference. The other 16% of respondents said they were unsure of how they felt about the decision.
Among political and demographic lines, the poll found:
Meanwhile, the ABC News/Ipsos poll found that the affirmative action ruling was the most popular ruling of the three major decisions handed down last week.
A slim majority approved of the decision to strike down President Joe Biden's student loan forgiveness plan (45% to 40%) and the ruling that "a website designer can deny services to same-sex customers seeking a wedding website" (43% to 42%).
However, the phrasing of the latter case was misleading because the Supreme Court did not rule that a business can "deny services to same-sex customers." Rather, the ruling said the government cannot compel individuals to make "expressive" speech that they disagree with.
Unsurprisingly, the poll also found that a vast majority of Democrats (76%) believe the Supreme Court decides cases based on their partisan views.
That figure is most likely driven by the fact that the court, in recent high-profile cases, has ruled against progressive and liberal interests. But their view is disputed by how rarely the six justices appointed by Republican presidents agreed in 6-3 decisions in the 2022-2023 court term. It happened in just 8% of cases.
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In a decision handed down last Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that admission policies at Harvard and UNC-Chapel Hill violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The decision effectively outlaws race-based — not diversity-conscious — admission policies.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, argued convincingly that the Supreme Court, when it green-lit affirmative action decades ago, always intended for race-conscious policies to sunset — not exist indefinitely.
For about 50 years, many institutions of
higher education have employed race-based affirmative
action programs. In the abstract, it might have been
debatable how long those race-based admissions programs
could continue under the “temporary matter”/“limited in
time” equal protection principle recognized and applied by
this Court. But in
2003, the [Supreme] Court applied that temporal equal protection principle and resolved the debate: The Court
declared that race-based affirmative action in higher
education could continue for another generation, and only
for another generation, at least absent something
unexpected.
As I have explained,
the Court’s pronouncement of a 25-year period—as both an
extension of and an outer limit to race-based affirmative
action in higher education—formed an important part of
the carefully constructed [Grutter v. Bollinger] decision. I would abide by
that temporal limit rather than discarding it, as today’s
dissents would do.
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