Your Weekend Reading: High Court Brings Gavel Down on Affirmative Action

The US Supreme Court’s Republican-appointed supermajority wielded its power broadly this week, striking down laws and erasing long-held legal precedent supported by large percentage of Americans. On Thursday the court effectively barred universities from using race as a factor in university admissions, marking the start of a new era in higher education. The next day, the same six justices tossed out President Joe Biden’s plan to slash the student debt of more than 40 million people, rejecting one of his signature initiatives as exceeding his power. They also ruled that a Christian website designer’s First Amendment rights allow her to discriminate against same-sex customers.

Critics of the court contend the cases represent an aggressive, ideological use of its power at a time when its credibility with Americans is at an historic low—both because of what Democrats see as a court beholden to Republican policies and recent revelations of questionable ethical conduct on the part of its most conservative members, Samuel Alito and Clarence Thomas. “This is not a normal court,” Biden said Thursday after it severely curtailed affirmative action. The Democrat also said he worried the website decision could “invite more discrimination against LGBTQI+ Americans.” Practically, some institutions of higher education said they would look for ways to continue to factor race into admissions—and student-loan relief advocates pressed Biden to find other ways to forgive college debt. But the broader issue, Noah Feldman writes in Bloomberg Opinion, is that the supermajority “is going to keep striking down liberal executive branch initiatives it doesn’t like.”