[W]ith respect to the prior year, the percentages of invited students classified as White dropped from 40% to 31%, while the percentage classified as Asian dropped from 21% to 18%….
More evidence of intent does not change the result of this case, given that our analysis assumes that the Plan was chosen precisely to alter racial demographics. We recognize that the text messages evince animus toward those White parents who opposed the Plan. But the district court supportably found as fact that the added element of animus played no causal role that was not fully and sufficiently played by the motive of reducing the under-representation of Black and Latinx students….
So, we need not decide what to make of a case in which a school district took action to reduce a numerically over-represented group’s share of admissions because of animus toward that group…. For the foregoing reasons, we affirm the district court’s…judgment rejecting the Coalition’s challenges to the Plan.
If this seems confusing given that the USSC recently ruled that race-based admissions to schools are unconstitutional, well you are not alone. The original judge, and the appeals court judges all acknowledge that the "zip code quota" is simply an indirect manner to create a race-based admissions standard. The admission seems stunning. It would be similar to someone admitting that they staged an accident that killed someone because they believed their deceit served as a loophole to being charged with murder.
The trouble with the legal logic here is that the "intent" is entirely what is at issue. Making your murder look like an accident is not a loophole to murder charges. You are simply disguising it while hoping that nobody catches you. Similarly creating a zip code quota as a means to garner the race-based admissions that has been declared unconstitutional does not make that form of race-based admissions constitutional. It only pretends to hide it.
In theory, I might have set up booby trap that killed my arch nemesis with the true intent to do something completely different. Perhaps I was attempting to kill a wild predator such as a bear or a wolf. But if I openly admit that I set it up to kill this person, the fact that there may have been an alternate motive is legally irrelevant. I admit to murder when I provided my intent. How is it that it would be different under these sorts of circumstances?
But the court here seems to imply that the open admission of intent by the school board (complete with racially insensitive statements) to create race-based admissions is irrelevant because the motive to discriminate against Whites and Asians was apparently already assumed? Which gets us back into the infinite loop corundum of how the court sees open attempts to use race as an admission standard as playing within the rules established by the USSC ruling?
To refresh our memories, the Boston school board issue is in regard to placement in the district's high achievement schools. These schools are where the best and the brightest were supposed to be given an opportunity to excel with more advanced classes. Three of the board members were found to have made disparaging comments about certain neighborhoods (predominately White and Asians) that used to make up a large portion of the advanced placement. One board member was apparently sick of "westie whites". Either way, their intent has been and still is to use race (rather than merit) to determine placement. By requiring each zip code have the same number of students, it guarantees that students with lower academics would be admitted over those with higher academics. This is a classic violation of the 14th Amendment equal protection clause.
The only thing that appears to make sense is that these Judges appear to believe that the heart of the USSC ruling was not actually whether race can be used to determine admissions, but that somehow the court was only narrowly ruling about the specific standard in question that was "point related". By this logic, the idea of openly increasing the amount of Black and Hispanic students at the expense of White and Asian is perfectly acceptable as long as you can come up with a way to do it without creating an obvious point system that provided each race with a number or points. So, the clever use of the "zip code" standard that accomplishes the same goal is just the manner in which the racist Boston school board outsmarted the USSC.
This is all going to head back to the USSC, where we all hope that they provide more clarity to the concept that they originally ruled on. It seems to be one of the many extremely frustrating concepts of the Roberts court. These rulings that seem to never quite resolve the situation because the Roberts court aways seems worried about who might criticize them for being too straight forward and decisive on any issue that is social or political in nature (which is nearly everything these days). If there is a way to hedge, they will hedge.
As long as the Roberts court allows the law to be played by liberals like it is a game, liberals will continue to do so. You will continue to see liberal Judges make liberal decisions that are likely going to be overturned, because maybe for once the decision might stand? In the meantime, the liberals who bring the cases can buy time or temporarily claim victory so why not do it? By being ambiguous in many of these rulings, the USSC seem to encourage these examples of having to come back and readdress the same thing over and over, when they simply could have put an end to it the first time.
How many times does the Colorado Baker have to be sued and end up with an appeal to the USSC before there is a ruling that covers what he needs covered? How hard is it to simply say he has the right to bake what he wants to bake without all the silly qualifiers? How many different ways will schools "discriminate" against Whites and Asians before the court simply makes an actual ruling that puts an end to it? Oddly, you do not see the same degree of ambiguity when the ruling goes against conservatives, and you certainly do not see the same number of conservatives trying to manipulate the system.
The legacy of the Roberts court will be feckless political nitpicked rulings and encourages this sort of nonsense. For the time being, things will remain as they are and this sort of behavior will continue.
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