Following last week’s landmark Supreme Court ruling targeting affirmative action at U.S. colleges, a top federal commissioner predicted that companies and corporations will see an increasing number of lawsuits over controversial left-wing diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) programs; as well as the equally controversial environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) measures.
Lucas told Fox last week that a number of businesses “don’t use the word affirmative action—it’s rampant today, from ESG, to focuses on equity, pretty much everywhere—there’s a ton of pressure at the corporate 100 across corporate America to take race-conscious decision-making, race-conscious actions in employment law, and that’s been illegal and it’s still illegal.”
There has been growing number of challenges to DEI programs in recent days, according to Lucas, coming even before the Supreme Court issued a 6-3 ruling that universities cannot take race into consideration when granting admission. The ruling is seen as landmark is it strikes down decades of precedent.
That case involved the admissions policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a public university, and Harvard University, the prestigious Ivy League college. Republican-appointed justices joined the majority, while all Democrat-appointed justices were part of the minority.
Racial Policies
Many institutions of higher education, corporations, and military leaders have long backed affirmative action on campuses in alleging that it’s used to remedy so-called racial inequality. But critics have said that giving advantages to one race of people regardless of the motivation is unconstitutional and would lead to destructive outcomes.Affirmative action had withstood Supreme Court scrutiny for decades, most recently in a 2016 ruling involving a white student, backed by affirmative activist Edward Blum, who sued the University of Texas after being rejected for admission. Blum, who has long opposed affirmative action, is the founder of Students for Fair Admissions.
In ruling against the universities’ policies, Chief Justice John Roberts argued that a student should be treated as “an individual” and not as part of a collective group such as a race. Instead of focusing on an individual’s merits, universities have done the opposite, Roberts added.
“And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” Roberts stated, while that the two colleges “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett joined Roberts in the majority. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented, with Sotomayor alleging that the majority’s ruling would “[entrench] racial inequality” for decades to come in the United States.
In spite of the order, some say that universities will continue to pursue race-based outcomes. A group that was involved in the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions Inc. (SFFA), said that schools will attempt to find a way around the ruling.
“We remain vigilant and intend to initiate litigation should universities defiantly flout this clear ruling and the dictates of Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause,” Edward Blum, the head of SFFA, stated in news release after the ruling. “The law will not tolerate direct proxies for racial classifications.”
The ruling is also a step backward, say pro-affirmative action groups.