I don't really see the constituonal basis here. Racial discrimination is explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, so there's an obvious angle for calling affirmative action unconditional. That doesn't really exist with legacy admissions.
It's still stupid and shouldn't be a thing, but it's not the job of the Courts to ensure an optimal college admissions system. Saying that it's de facto racial discrimination is a pretty big stretch.
The argument is that legacy admissions are a criterion being used in lieu of race to achieve racial discrimination. Similar systems were an aggressive part of the Jim Crowe South to prevent blacks from voting when they couldn't make skin color-specific rules anymore, where you would have to prove literacy or your grandfather's ability to vote to get a vote in since they knew that no black person could pass those tests.
It's not the strongest case, but it isn't unreasonable and it has a rational basis. I'm skeptical that even a disinterested court would accept the logic on its face and know that the current court will just wallow in its hypocrisy, but I at least understand the principle.
The defense to it is that these elite universities actively desire diversity, so clearly they are not using legacy admits as a proxy for racial discrimination. There's plenty of evidence that there is a different, corrupt-but-legal purpose for these legacy systems that is not racially motivated.
edit: On the flip-side, if indirectly discriminatory policies like these ARE allowed, it gives the universities a clear path forward to continuations of their AA policies. They just need to replace the race of their applicants with proxies for race that are allowed. Theoretically, this logic could force a standoff -- either policies that indirectly have discriminatory outcomes (defined by who?) are illegal or they aren't. Or else you'd have to somehow prove intention to discriminate before you could find a policy illegal, which is another very complex can of worms that the elite universities could probably get around.
And so, like with everything around this case, it likely won't change any real behavior from the elite universities but will seriously fuck with less affluent ones.
If Biden packs the court, the pubies will do the same, but worse, at their first opportunity. I have no good solutions, but impeach the shitheads seems like a good thing to do.
Yes, the SCROTUS is destroying democracy, but packing the court will only create more fights.
The GOP has already packed the courts, and Trump has already said he’ll nominate more SCOTUS judges if he’s elected. The fight is already here, but it’s entirely one-sided.
"packing the court" specifically refers to adding more justices because you don't like the current ones. the last time that the court's number of judges changed was in 1869, when it went up from eight to nine.
So, I think it's fairly safe to say, no, the republicans have not yet packed the court. McConnell, however, has definitely played some hypocritical bullshit during Obama's term, blocking nominations from being confirmed specifically to allow a republican nomination, and that probably needs to be fixed as well as adding more direct oversight and ethics rules. (and I mean rules- not "guidelines")
They will already do everything they can get away with, without worrying about the other side is doing. If the courts can be packed then they will pack them regardless of what dems do.
It baffles me how a fake case can even have any legitimacy with the court. Yet here we are...SCOTUS is even more a joke now. It's just so tragic their bad faith & buffoonery affects so many people .
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