court to end affirmative action will have direct legal impact on admissions at colleges and universities across the country, but it also has far reaching implications for diversity, equity and inclusion across the private sector, and it can be a boom for conservative groups who have made dismantling corporate diversity initiatives their common cause. for the past several months america-first legal a conservative group led by former trump advisor stephen miller, that group has been filing civil rights complaints with the equal employment opportunity commission against private sector companies like starbucks and mcdonald s and alaska airlines for their efforts to increase diversity in their work forces. two other conservative groups are challenging a rule approved by the sec that requires the nasdaq stock exchange to publicly disclose the diversity of their boards and mandate two diverse directors. a ruling on that is pending before the fifth circuit court of appeals. will hill who leads
because i think it s worth lingering for a moment at least in dobbs they were honest enough to say we are overturning roe v. wade. it s not even clear from the majority opinion it functionally overturns bache and gruder and fisher and all the affirmative action cases. it doesn t say it, and justice sotomayor calls out the chief and says you can t say you re not overturning it when you re overturning it. i think something that s shocking and feels familiar from dobbs is this very cynical use of this long amazingly important history of civil rights victory that culminates in some sense with brown v. board. and much like justice aalito
dahlia, to the dobbs parallel, it s also at odds with public opinion, where the public is on this. look at the polling. i think 57% of the public opposed the court s overturning of roe and thought affirmative action could continue. ap in may of this year, 63 perls of the public believes that supporting affirmative action in colleges is a good thing. i mean, am i wrong to say that this feels like a hangover of the civil rights era? they couldn t win on civil rights, affirmative action became the hobbyhorse in the late rs 70s and 80s and now th issue a death nel in the same way the women s liberation movement they couldn t stop and they have this victory with dobbs. it feels so familiar with dobbs in some sense, alex,
today. in a fiery dissent ketanji brown jackson called that ruling a tragedy for us all, today she wrote the majority pulls the rip cord and announces color-blindness forou all by lel fiat. but deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. if the colleges of this country are required tos ignore a thin that matters, it will not just go away, it will take longer for racism to leave us, and ultimately ignoring race just or makes it matter more. joining us now to discuss are melissa murray, and dahlia lithwick. there s a lot to talk about, ladies. melissa, let me start with you. the reason we went back through the history of the rights war
its responsibility to eliminate discrimination in higher education, but in its zeal to accomplish this worthy purpose government orders what is in effect a quota system both in hiring and in education. they don t call it a quota system. it s an affirmative action program. now, if you happen to belong to an ethnic group thought recognized by the federal government noty entitled to special treatment, you are a victim of reverse discrimination. and i d like to have an opportunity toha put an end to this federal distortion of equal rights. that was reagan. reagan didn t win the presidency, he didn t make it past the primaries but oh, boy did he get a chance to chip away at what he called the federal distortion of equal rights when he won the presidency of 1980.