Both justices have now staked out starkly opposite positions on whether the policy should be allowed to continue, facing off in a pair of blockbuster cases that will be decided this month and address the future of race in college admissions.
Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, left, and Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the formal group photograph at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, Oct. 7, 2022."Their positions are really the epitome of the nuanced argument that we've been having around affirmative action for decades in this country," said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal contributor and former Justice Department attorney.
Associate Justice Clarence Thomas during the formal group photograph at the Supreme Court in Washington, DC, Oct. 7, 2022.Just five years later, Sotomayor, who would become the court's first and only Latina member, tread a similar path to Yale from the Bronx in New York City. "Without affirmative action, I couldn't even have participated in the race of a good education because I didn't even know that there was a race being run," Sotomayor said.
"By and large what they're going to say is that race itself cannot be a determinative factor in one's admission because a benefit to one race, quote unquote, is a detriment to another," Isgur predicted."Once again, it's the elites. I mean, they're telling us what we need," he lamented of affirmative action programs in an appearance last year at a conservative legal conference.
Thomas graduated with honors in the top 2% of his class, going on to Yale Law School at the same time it was openly recruiting more minority students. "He's saying that affirmative action hurt him overall, and that as the only Black member of the court, he's an important and unique voice on that front," Isgur says now.
The contrast was on full display during oral arguments last year in a pair of cases that pit Harvard University and the University of North Carolina -- which consider race in admissions -- against a group of Asian American student challengers led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Supreme Court justices’ robes aren’t red or blue | OpinionA former New Jersey Supreme Court justice says the decision in the Alabama redistricting case makes it easier for us to see the U.S. high court as one about ideas, instead of politics.
Read more »
Supreme Court can acknowledge affirmative action as reverse discriminationThe dream of an America where all men and women were considered equal under the law has always been an unfinished masterpiece.
Read more »
Republicans set to lose multiple seats due to Supreme Court rulingNAACP president Derrick Johnson welcomed the Supreme Court's decision as a 'triumph for our democracy.'
Read more »
Why the Supreme Court Declined an Opportunity to Diminish the Voting Rights ActIn a new Q. & A., IChotiner speaks with ruthgreenwood about the Supreme Court’s recent ruling on Allen v. Milligan, which determined that Alabama’s redistricting had illegally diluted the power of Black voters.
Read more »
Supreme Court endorses race-based districtingChief Justice John Roberts famously wrote in a 2006 political redistricting case that “it is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.” In a landmark redistricting decision on June 8, Roberts engaged in exactly this sordid business.
Read more »
US Supreme Court Kicks American Wetlands When They're DownIt appears the Court's right-wing majority wants to open the floodgates to polluters even as we continue to learn more about just how connected wetlands are to bigger bodies of water and also to our entire way of life.
Read more »