On Monday, Constitutional Accountability Center filed an amici curiae brief in the Supreme Court
in Fisher v. University of Texas,
urging the Court to reaffirm that the Fourteenth Amendment permits the
sensitive use of race to foster equality in education and to uphold the
University of Texas’s use of race as one factor among many in its holistic admissions
policy. Our
brief, filed on behalf of CAC and six of the nation’s most prominent
constitutional scholars—Bruce Ackerman, Jack Balkin, Burt Neuborne, James Ryan,
Eric Schnapper, and Adam Winkler—demonstrates that the text and history of the Fourteenth
Amendment permit the government to take race into account in certain
circumstances in order to ensure equality of opportunity for all persons
regardless of race.
Fisher v. University
of Texas—now back at the Supreme Court for a second time—is the latest
effort by the conservative legal movement to have the Supreme Court reinterpret
the Fourteenth Amendment and strike down race-conscious admissions policies
that have helped ensure diversity on college campuses. Over the last four decades, conservative
Justices have been waging a long-running battle against affirmative action and
other race-conscious measures to ensure equality of opportunity, claiming the
mantle of Justice’s Harlan’s dissent in Plessy
v. Ferguson to argue that the Fourteenth Amendment prohibits virtually all
use of race by the government. As Chief
Justice John Roberts famously put it, “[t]he way to stop discrimination on the
basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” Progressives, all too often, have missed
their most powerful rejoinder: the Fourteenth Amendment’s text and
history. As our brief explains, not only does the Amendment’s text permit government to
enact race-conscious policies to fulfill the Constitution’s promise of equality,
but the Framers of the Amendment themselves enacted many such measures.
In nearly forty years of Supreme Court
litigation, conservatives have never been able to square their arguments with
the fact that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment were the originators of
affirmative action.
The Constitution is certainly color-blind to a certain
extent. In writing the broadest textual
guarantee of equality in our Constitution, the Framers of the Fourteenth
Amendment very deliberately rejected limitations on the scope of the Equal
Protection Clause. As the text of the
Equal Protection Clause makes clear, every person can invoke its universal
guarantee of equality. It was precisely
for this reason that Justice Harlan declared in Plessy that the “Constitution is color-blind, and neither knows nor
tolerates classes among citizens.” But color-blind
does not mean blind to reality. Both in
writing the text and in enacting race-conscious measures to foster equality, the
Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment resoundingly rejected the notion that the
government could not take race into account in order to ensure equality of
opportunity for all persons regardless of race.
Faced with the task of fulfilling President Lincoln’s promise of a “new
birth of freedom” and integrating African Americans into the civic, economic,
and social life of the nation, the Framers recognized that the Constitution
could not be simplistically colorblind.
Far from establishing a ban on the sensitive use of race by
the government, the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment rejected proposals to
prohibit any and all use of racial classifications by the government. Indeed, throughout Reconstruction, the
Framers enacted a long list of race-conscious measures designed to ensure
equality of opportunity for all persons regardless of race. These acts were not limited to the former
slaves or the goal of redressing badges of slavery or other
government-sponsored racial discrimination.
Rather, the race-conscious measures enacted by the Framers of the
Fourteenth Amendment were forward-looking in design, seeking to ensure equality
of opportunity and fulfill the promise of equality contained in the Fourteenth
Amendment. The nation’s first
affirmative action programs—which included federal efforts to ensure equal
educational opportunity for African Americans—were debated and often opposed on
the ground that the legislation classified on account of race. The Framers consistently rejected these
arguments. In their view, efforts to
ensure equality of opportunity and assist African Americans in securing the
full measure of freedom promised in the Fourteenth Amendment were fully in
accord with the constitutional principle of equality.
When conservative Supreme Court Justices insist that “[t]he
way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on
the basis of race” and that the government may not take race into account in
order to foster equality in education, they are turning the Fourteenth Amendment
on its head. The Framers of the
Fourteenth Amendment recognized that forward-looking, race-conscious efforts in
the field of education were necessary to fulfill the Constitution’s promise of
meaningful equality. African Americans
could not fully enjoy the freedom promised by the Fourteenth Amendment until
school houses and college gates were opened wide so that African Americans
could rise to become the nation’s next generation of lawyers, doctors, and
statesmen. Today, colleges and
universities around the country have recognized that the sensitive use of race
continues to be necessary to obtain the educational benefits of diversity and
ensure a path to leadership and professional life for African Americans and
other racial minorities. Nearly 150
years after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Framers’ judgment
demands respect. The Supreme Court in Fisher should honor it.
David H. Gans is the Director of the Human Rights, Civil Rights & Citizenship Program at the Constitutional Accountability Center and a co-author of CAC's brief in Fisher. This post is cross-posted at Text and History.