Affirmative action ban court challenge misguided

God save us all. If all it takes for ANY issue to be Constitutional is to have the majority of voters approve it, then we’re living in Nazi Germany.

We have a Comstitution for a reason, and we have Courts for a reason —and all of it is desigend to keep the majority from stomping on the rights of the minority. I find it a bit more than amusing that the Editorial Board of the State News is now comprised of a bunch of “Supreme Court Jurists,” deciding weighty issues of “constitutionality.” I always thought there were just nine of them, and they sit in “judgement” in a big white building in Washington DC —who’da thunk they’d be right here on Grand River!!

I find it disturbing that so many Americans have comfortably fascist ideas of law. That is, only a select class are qualified to read and understand law: namely 9 Supreme Court Justices.

What else are we talking about? Judges don’t make laws, they “interpret” what’s already been written. Unless we really are fascists and believe unelected people can craft the very meaning of the English language itself.

To the above: you’re a fascist.

This is the reason why I believe the ban on affirmative action is constuititional…its in the constutition. Plain and simple.

Some random thoughts on this article:

1) If all it took to pass constitutional muster was a vote of the majority and a court to agree with it’s legality, then we would still have separate but equal doctrine, and a host of what we now accept as unconstitutional laws.
2) Affirmative Action was banned, in part because of a backlash against those who talked out of one side of their mouth (AA is not a quota system), then in practice, actually put race as the number one criteria in determining who should be hired, admitted, etc.
3) The playing field is NOT level in many aspects of life, and therefore, without legitimate applications of affirmative action (or some other meaningful alternative), access to education and employment will remain skewed. Don’t believe me? Look at the enrollment numbers of minorities at public universities in California since they banned affirmative action.

Bottom line? If those who truly oppose affirmative action as a form of bias and discrimination in higher education admissions were truly serious, then they would also ban the use of legacies. My guess however is that they are either unaware of this privilege that is granted to the historically advantaged (e.g., whites who had access to colleges when it was LEGAL to keep women and people of color out) or aren’t willing to put their money where their mouths are.

First, I am a big supporter of and believer in Affirmative Action.

But I do not anticipate the litigants here will have any success.

As a preliminary matter, some of the above posters apparently do not understand the interrelationship between the fedral and states’ constitutions. We can amend our constitution all day long, but if it violates the federal constitution, it will be invalidated. That is why they are in federal court.

The case was summarily dismissed by the trial court, and i expect the 6th Cir. to Affirm. The US constitution PERMITS Affirmative Action, it does not REQUIRE it.

Exactly, so i’m still waiting to hear how in the world anyone could argue that the law is unconstitutional.

Just because you dont like it, its bad, sucks, or is terrible, does not mean its unconstitutional.

There are ways to revoke it but i’d truly love to hear a rational, non-ranting, explination of how logically this could possibly be argued to be unconstitutional.

I’m waiting.

Amen “dismayed” … I’m dismayed too.

This is absolute crap from the State News. Not one of them has a lawyer or law degree, and yet the portent to dictate to us that fighting Prop 2 as being unconstitutional if fruitless. What a joke. Obviously, the SN has a right of center slant this year, it has popped up again and again (despite the knee-jerk right’s absurd tendancy to lump all media as “liberal biased” — this is the best SN, for them, in years; why aren’t Jason and the boys cheering!?)… If the SN has the goods, that is, the intellectual and legal heft to tell us why the anti-Prop 2 group’s fight is fruitless, bring it! … or just shut the hell up, because you sound stupid and slanted.

Here is the opinion if anyone is interested:

http://www.mied.uscourts.gov/Opinions/lawsonpdf/06-15024 Prop 2 Opinion Granting MSJ.pdf

Several of my colleagues made the trip to Cincinnati to watch the oral arguments and our feeling is that this will go before the full circuit court panel of judges by a vote of 2-1.

Also, I wanted to say that I believe that the editors do not truly understand AA based on their article. *No disrespect intended, just an opinion.

Ridiculous:

I have not listened to the oral arguments, although I expect to within the next couple weeks.

I am curious, though, what about the arguments leads you to believe the 6th Circuit will convene en banc for this case?

And, honestly I don’t think most people who oppose AA understand it, but the merits of the policy are not at issue here

Townsend:

Why don’t you explain why the AA ban is Unconstitutional?

The burden is on the challenging party to establish unconstitutionality.

Again, i am a staunch supporter of Affirmative Action, but your comments come off as “stupid and slanted”

Plain and simple. It is not an opinion. It is just bad policy.

White basketball players are an under-represented ethnic group on the basketball team, and even the football team.

If you support affirmative action for our sports teams so that the ethnic composition truly represents the American public, raise your hand.

The deafening silence ensues. Nobody gives a damn about affirmative action for the sports teams, because we only want the best, and the best are primarily black, that’s a fact. I only want the best for sports and academics, regardless of ethnicity, everyone should agree.

Do you know why black’s tend to be “naturally better” at sports than white people?

Slaves used to be selectively bred to ensure the strongest and largest offspring, which in turn would make the most effective field hands. No b*llshit. In modern times, black communities (and many other minority communities) have seen sports as a way to climb the social ladder out of poverty, despite the fact that less than 3% of college athletes go on to play professional sports as a career/job.

Your analogy doesn’t stand up to scrutiny… the fact is that sports actually act as a form of affirmative action, by allowing minority students to go to college/university on an athletic scholarship, that many would not have otherwise been able to attend.

You realize I don’t disagree right? I agree, those who get in on sports scholarships are for the most part academically worthless to the institution, white and black alike.

I could make an equally racist claim that Northern Europeans are better at academics than the native Africans and their descendants because the harsh winter climate of Northern Europe necessitated larger brains for the planning of agriculture, food storage, home winterization, etc.

The current practice of separating th genders into sports could be seen as affirmative action. People would fear that a co-ed basketball team would be dominated by men, so we separate the teams (among other concerns like sexual harassment).

Would it not be schematically equivalent to have separate but equal sports teams for different races if we can do it for gender?

In any case, you’re cherry picking. Nobody wants to see affirmative action for basketball, we like our #2 ranked team just the way it is. But so many people see affirmative action at the universities as the only step to educating a class of people. Maybe the real problem is that people who are self-educated face extreme employment discrimination, they are forced to basically bribe off a university with loads of tuition and eventually a degree to even be considered for good paying jobs.

You’re sneering at people by basically calling them too stupid to stand on their own two feet as an individual. You’re forcing them to be socialistically identified by their race rather than their innately individual human quality that knows no skin color.

Word to the wise, Abraham Lincoln was self-educated on virtually all branches of knowledge.

A few hundred years of breeding in slavery would be enough to make a race of people dominant in one aspect. That is an old myth that unintelligent people like to say to make them sound intelligent.

Face it, a law saying “You cannot use race as a deciding factor” is completely constitutional.

The editorial staff brought up a great point, there are plenty of poor ass white people who are just as disadvantaged as poor black kids in the cities. Any sort of program to help people from disadvantaged backgrounds needs to realize that the cause of their disadvantage has absolutely nothing to do with their ethnicity and everything to do with their family wealth and upbringing.

This article is kind of… ridiculous is the word that comes to mind.

Affirmative action has never been only about race. In fact, those who have benefited the most from affirmative action are middle class white women.

And saying affirmative action should only be about socio-economic status, ignores the fact that race based affirmative action is a response to racism. Alive and well in the US today, racism is based on race, not just SES. Focusing affirmative action only on SES ignores this.

As for U of Ms point system that everyone loves to talk about , yes, points where given for race, specifically 20 points. Let’s also not forget that this system was struck down by the courts prior to prop 2 in 2006 and therefore, in reality, has pretty much nothing to do with it.
Points where also given for a variety of other factors, many of which statistically where more likely to benefit white student.
Certain schools, primarily private schools, add up to 10 additional points. Being a MI resident gives you ten. Being from an underrepresented MI county gives you 6. Being from an underrepresented state gives you 2. Being a legacy gives you 4 points. Having a grandparent, sibling or spouse as an alum gives you 1. And the miscellaneous category under which one could get 20 points for being an underrepresented racial ethnic minority could give you 20 points, there were also options (of which only 1 may be applied) 20 points for being socio-economic disadvantage, 20 points for being underrepresented identification or education, 5 points for men in nursing, 20 points for scholarship athlete, and 20 points for provost’s discretion. So actually it’s not as simple as a racial/ethnic minority getting more points than a white person would. In fact, all other things being equal, an racial/ethnic minority candidate would have the same points as a poor white person, or the same points as a white person who was a scholarship athlete, or a white person who got provost’s discretion.
People like to talk about the point system as if the only points it gave were purely academic based and race, when there were actually a lot of non-academic factors that went into it.
And again, let’s remember this was struck down by the courts well before prop 2 of 2006. Prop 2 of 2006 had nothing to do with removing the points system from U of M.
“Is it simply because they like affirmative action? Or because they truly find the ban on it unconstitutional?”

Probably the second! This is a pretty juvenile argument against one’s opposition and I am surprised you all thought it was worthy of publishing here. Once again the word “ridiculous” is springing to mind.

And the truth is, banning affirmative action doesn’t make race not a factor, actually, it makes an even large factor as people fall back on prejudiced beliefs, and find themselves more likely to choose the white candidate all else being equal.

“If a piece of legislation is decided by the voters and affirmed by the courts, how can it be in violation of our Constitution?”

That’s so ignorant it isn’t worth the time to argue against it.

“If a piece of legislation is decided by the voters and affirmed by the courts, how can it be in violation of our Constitution?”
Are you kidding me? This occurs whenever a civil rights issue comes to a vote by the public. The Prop 2 before affirmative action banned gay marriage. Prop 6 in California. I believe our constitution states that all men are created equal and yet when civil rights are brought to a vote, the public says no.