ATLANTA (AP) — Entering court using a walker, a doctor’s note clutched in his hand, 70-year-old Dana Williams, who suffers serious heart problems, hypertension and asthma, pleaded to delay eviction from his two-bedroom apartment in Atlanta.
Although sympathetic, the judge said state law required him to evict Williams and his 25-year-old daughter De’mai Williams in April because they owed $8,348 in unpaid rent and fees on their $940-a-month apartment.
They have been living in limbo ever since.
They moved into a dilapidated Atlanta hotel room with water dripping through the bathroom ceiling, broken furniture and no refrigerator or microwave. But at $275-a-week, it was all they could afford on Williams’ $900 monthly social security check and the $800 his daughter gets biweekly from a state agency as her father’s caretaker.
“I really don’t want to be here by the time his birthday comes” in August, De’mai Williams said. “For his health, it’s just not right.”
WAPO:House Republicans censuring Adam Schiff says more about them than him
Rep. Adam B. Schiff (D-Calif.) became on Wednesday just the third member of Congress to be censured in the past 40 years. The party-line vote reflected worse on the House Republicans who pushed it through than it did on Mr. Schiff.
The resolution accuses the former House Intelligence Committee chairman of falsely claiming that Donald Trump’s 2016 presidential campaign colluded with the Russian government. Mr. Schiff responded that Paul Manafort, as chairman of Mr. Trump’s campaign, provided internal campaign polling data to a Russian intelligence operative amid widespread Kremlin efforts to assist Mr. Trump. Experts can debate whether that technically constitutes collusion. But this semantic question is hardly the basis for a censure motion.
Contrary to what many Trump supporters claim, the investigation by Robert S. Mueller III never exonerated Mr. Trump. Indeed, the special counsel’s report laid out significant evidence of obstruction of justice. It’s indisputable that Russia interfered in the 2016 election on Mr. Trump’s behalf.
Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions, says race cannot be a factor
Source: AP
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
The court’s conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively. Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.” In a separate dissent, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson — the court’s first Black female justice — called the decision “truly a tragedy for us all.”
The Supreme Court had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016. But that was before the three appointees of former President Donald Trump joined the court. At arguments in late October, all six conservative justices expressed doubts about the practice, which had been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978.
Supreme Court Strikes Down Universities’ Affirmative Action Programs by Pema Levy and Stephanie Mencimer
June 29, 2023
Introduction:
(Mother Jones) The Supreme Court ruled today in a 6-3 decision that the use of race in college admissions violates the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment and thus is unconstitutional, dealing a serious blow to affirmative action measures used by colleges to create diverse student bodies and remedy past discrimination against minorities.
“Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. “This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Today’s ruling removes an “irreplaceable tool” for improving higher education, says David Hinojosa of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, who represented a coalition of students and recent graduates backing affirmative action in the North Carolina case. “We know this because every time there’s been a ban on affirmative action, in Michigan, in Oklahoma, in California, in Texas,” he explains, “there have been tremendous drops in racial diversity at the more selective universities.”
“Those state flagships,” Hinojosa adds, “create pathways to leadership that will then be broken and need to be repaired.”
In their filings, the universities had argued that allowing the use of race in admissions had benefits for the school as well as the larger society, and that a diverse student body helped prepare students for a modern workforce. Roberts, who has fought affirmative action since his early days as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, dismissed those goals as mushy and undefined ideals that would be impervious to judicial review. “While these are commendable goals, they are not sufficiently coherent for purposes of strict scrutiny,” he wrote. “It is unclear how courts are supposed to measure any of these goals, or if they could, to know when they have been reached so that racial preferences can end.”
Thomas and Jackson Spar on Race in Affirmative Action Ruling by Kelsey Reichmann
June 29, 2023
Introduction:
WASHINGTON (Courthouse News) — A polarity on race in America played out between Justices Clarence Thomas and Ketanji Brown Jackson in a ruling Thursday that gutted the use of race in college admissions.
“It's an interesting fact that they are the two Black members of the court, who will hold such different views about the meaning of race and racism in American society,” Katherine Franke, professor of law and director of the Center for Gender & Sexuality Law at Columbia University, said in a phone call. “Those two opinions really crystallized those two different worldviews.”
Concurring with the ruling Thursday that Harvard and the University of North Carolina unconstitutional policies on affirmative action, the Bush-appointed Thomas endorsed a colorblind reading of the Constitution’s promise of equal protection.
“The Constitution’s colorblind rule reflects one of the core principles upon which our Nation was founded: that “all men are created equal,’” Thomas wrote.
Jackson argued meanwhile that this view ignores history as well as reality. As the Biden appointee sees it, race blindness widens opportunity gaps.
