President Joe Biden attacked the Supreme Court as “not a normal court” on Thursday after the court ruled race-based admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional.
“Is this a rogue court?” a reporter asked the president.
After a long pause, Biden responded, “This is not a normal court.”
Justices John Roberts, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett voted with the majority.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote in majority opinion. “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
A number of other prominent democrats also slammed the Supreme Court’s 6-3 decision that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, including former President Barack Obama and former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.
“Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions–it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table. In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it’s time to redouble our efforts,” Obama wrote in a statement.
Pelosi accused the court of narrowing “access to higher education” and “the crucial ladder of opportunity that it provides.”
“Its impact will be felt imminently, diminishing hard-fought progress for racial justice,” Pelosi tweeted, adding in a follow-up tweet that Chief Justice Roberts’ majority opinion “does violence to justice and fairness in America.”
This was a breaking news story. The details were periodically updated as more information became available.
