the court sided with a christian web designer in colorado who refuses to create websites to celebrate same-sex weddings, saying it violated her first amendment rights. cnn supreme court reporter, arian de vogue, watched this unfold in person. you ve been following this court for a very long time. what did you make of this court s rulings? lots of polarizing, if you will, and precedent-setting decisions. reporter: you re absolutely right. in the last few days we really saw just how robust this conservative majority is in all those cases that you just talked about. if you look at the affirmative action case in particular, it really is a good example of just how the liberals and the conservatives in certain cases are just seeing the law and the country in two opposite ways. in that particular case it was
what s your reaction to that? my reaction is that the difference we see between the majority and the dissent shows two very different views of the equal protection clause and equality in this country. as was laid out so well, in the affirmative action case, we have the supreme court, the conservative majority saying basically that we have no off-ramp to continue these plans, and the equal protection clause says we don t discriminate on the basis of race, period. so we don t take race into account. then we have the liberal justices really saying, but if we don t take race into account, then we re ignoring what true equality means. and in fact we re ignoring cases like brown vs. board of education which were race-conscious decisions. so interesting you have two kind of factions of the supreme court arguing over what equality means, and even arguing over what the landmark case, brown
america, all those areas could be less diverse because of this decision. and justice jackson, she really called him out on this, and she said, look, we don t live in a color blind society right now. there is still discrimination, and those programs were necessary. you have pointed out just how pointed the language in many of these opinions was at the end of the term. let s talk a little bit about that. what was your reaction? this one was particularly interesting because in this affirmative action case, you had justice clarence thomas. he wrote a concurrence and he actually read it from the bench. it really happens with his deep baritone. he took the opportunity to name her and really one section of the opinion really goes point for point based on what she had written. here s what he said, so you can
elections. had hillary clinton for example gotten elected, it we wouldn t be talking about any of this. that s what we need to look at, and who would we putting in at the supreme court. that s how we fix this. that s how we need to make sure that we are full throttle on this when we look at the elections 2024. with us now, nbc news supreme court reporter, lawrence hurly. lawrence, thank you for joining me. let s start with justice ketanji brown jackson, who writes this dissent on the affirmative action case, quote, with let them eat cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the rip cord and announces color blindness for all by legal fiat. but given grace irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. help us understand what she means by this color blind argument. yes there s a real difference that between the conservative and liberal justices on the court on this
kind of affirmative action. just think about that moment for a second, now having seen some of this man s trajectory to power. they think he hates more than anything, that wounds his pride, is to be viewed as being less than or not qualified, as being in affirmative action case. and yet, at every key juncture in his life, he s asked about it over and over again. and for thomas and the conservative majority in the court, it all boils down to this nebulous concept of merit, of qualified, who is deserving of opportunities and who is not. but i think that misses a point. it is really a question about what kinds of institutions, and what kind of society we want to have. do we want a society where people like clarence thomas, from the small town in georgia, just several generations removed from slavery and jim crow, selected, nurtured, and encouraged, or once in which they don t go to holy cross,