In its crusade to make America a racially polarized nation, the Obama Administration has had a tough couple of years. Despite repeated pleas for the continued use of racial preferences, and its crusade to inject disparate impact into every facet of American life, both the people and the the courts aren’t biting.
In Fisher and Shelby County, the Supreme Court restricted the use of race in college admissions and voting respectively. In the recent Kaplan and Freeman decisions, the courts have excoriated the Administration’s disparate impact campaign. And two weeks ago in Schuette, the Supreme Court said that voters are free to ban their state governments from ever considering race. Schuette is especially important, because poll after poll and state after state demonstrate that the people — of all races — are fed up with government treating individuals differently because of the color of their skin.
But with each of these setbacks, the Obama Administration remains defiant. After Fisher, the Administration issued guidance telling universities to continue discriminating. After Shelby County, the Administration attempted to resurrect Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act by using the never-before-used Section 3 of the VRA to “bail-in” the State of Texas. And now, after Schuette, the Administration wants to assure schools that they remain free to discriminate so long as there are “no restrictions in state law.”
The Administration is out of touch with reality. The American people are tired of governments constantly attempting to classify individuals on the basis of race. But here’s the silver lining: so long as the Administration continues to urge discrimination, the sooner the people of other states will enact more bans, and the sooner the Supreme Court will have the opportunity to further explain how the Equal Protection Clause forbids such discrimination.