A nonprofit law center whose mission is to defend the constitutional rights of Americans has sent a letter to more than 150 medical schools nationwide, calling upon them to end their race-based admissions policies in the wake of the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling that struck down affirmative action.
Liberty Justice Center, which won a major victory for First Amendment rights in June 2018 after the Supreme Court ruled in Janus v. AFSCME that non-union government workers cannot be required to pay union fees as a condition of working in public service, has now announced efforts to inform the schools of their “legal obligation to end race-based admissions policies” in response to the Court’s recent ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.
“The Supreme Court ruling concludes that diversity is no longer a compelling interest under the Equal Protection Clause, meaning schools can no longer discriminate based on an individual’s skin color when reviewing their application for admission,” the center stated Thursday in a press release in which it addressed the ruling’s impact on medical schools.
“In an industry where merit and skill must be the most important factors when selecting the top applicants for admission, medical schools have a moral obligation to swiftly comply with the law and remove these discriminatory practices,” said Jacob Huebert, president of Liberty Justice Center.
The center’s letter to the schools informs them of “the consequences should your medical school fail to comply with the Court’s ruling,” adding:
In accordance with the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., your medical school must immediately cease any and all policies, practices, programs, or procedures that include a racial component. This includes any Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (“DEI”) policies. Consequently, to the extent your medical school fails to immediately comply with the Supreme Court’s recent decision, Liberty Justice Center will actively engage in strategic litigation to vindicate the fundamental constitutional rights of those individuals whose rights have been violated.
In its amicus brief submitted to Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., the center argued that affirmative action policies are discriminatory and “inefficient.”
“It particularly noted the universities’ discrimination against Asians and Asian-Americans, and the universities’ failure to recognize the diversity among Asians and Asian-Americans,” the center stated in its press release.
Numerous constitutional law experts applauded the Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action policies but also warned that schools of higher education that have been steeped for decades in “diversity,” “equity,” and “inclusion” (DEI) ideology are not likely to give up their practices easily.
“My elation regarding the opinion’s vindication of the rule of law and rejection of racial discrimination is tempered somewhat by the fact that the Left began preparing for this result a couple of years ago by abandoning objective admissions measures such as the SAT, etc.,” said Peter Kirsanow, a member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights, in comments to The Star News Network following the Court’s decision.
“They remain intent on discriminating on the basis of race and will continue to search for more subtle means to do so,” Kirsanow said. “Nonetheless, this decision makes it a heckuva lot harder.”
Ilya Shapiro, a senior fellow and director of constitutional studies at the Manhattan Institute, remarked that “this is only the end of the beginning of the fight for equality in educational opportunity”:
Higher-education grandees have long interpreted the Court’s cautious approval of the temporary use of race (as one of many factors) as a green light for a permanent diversity-industrial complex. They will not go quickly into the colorblind night of merit-based admissions, but will fight for workarounds to maintain their system of racial spoils.
“So, there’ll be more litigation, but it’s clear that the Supreme Court has no more constitutional patience for admissions officers’ social engineering or university administrators’ DEI posturing,” Shapiro said.
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Susan Berry, PhD, is national education editor at The Star News Network. Email tips to [email protected]
