SCOTUS' Affirmative Action Ruling is Only the First Step Towards Toppling the DEI Regime

Not a single penny of taxpayer dollars, nor any other government-granted privileges are conferred upon those institutions that discriminate in ways violative of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th

Diversity & Inclusion targets for the Air Force.

SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling Only First Step Toward Restoring Civil Rights

In a free society that champions equality, judging people on their merits rather than on their skin color would be an uncontroversial practice.

So, that America’s ruling class recoiled in horror at the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, which barred affirmative action in admissions at schools receiving government largesse, was telling.

Our elites betrayed their “anti-racist” belief in discriminating on the basis of race, purportedly to right past wrongs and achieve “equity.”

Equity, which is antithetical to equality, and, when pursued in violation of our rights, corrosive of the liberty and justice those rights underpin, is literally central to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) regime elites have imposed on the country.

In theory, the Court’s jurisprudence threatens to unravel that regime, or at least state sponsorship of it.

In practice, however, as can be seen in Harvard’s near-instant telegraphing in the wake of the Court’s decision that it would use proxies for race to maintain a de facto affirmative action program, our elites will do everything possible to circumvent the ruling.

To uphold the decision’s letter and spirit, that of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment on which it’s based, and more broadly defend the inalienable rights of the smallest minority—the individual—lawmakers, litigators, and liberty-and-justice-loving Americans will have to act.

To that end, a recent amendment to a key piece of federal legislation, which preceded the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard decision, should serve as the starting point of a broad-based effort to roll back what amounts to state-sanctioned racism and restore genuine civil rights.

The amendment, offered by Republican Rep. Jim Banks of Indiana, to the 2024 National Defense Authorization Act, prohibits the military from using race or gender as a factor in recruitment and mandates that the military base any “accession, assignment, selection, or promotion” decisions on merit.

I write about that amendment, and how it can serve as a model for comprehensively combatting the DEI regime in a new piece at the Epoch Times.