Is Affirmative Action Dead?
Has the U.S. Supreme Court’s recent decision in Ricci v. DeStefano ended affirmative action in America?
Political commentator Juan Williams thinks so. “Affirmative action, age 45, is dead,” he writes in the Washington Post. The decision on behalf of white firefighters “cut the last legal underpinnings for affirmative action,” he writes. “Without protection from reverse-discrimination lawsuits, virtually every instance of affirmative action can now be forever tied in a legal tangle that chokes the life out of it.”
Ricci held that a fear of disparate impact claims by minorities does not justify a city’s decision to toss a firefighter promotional exam that produced no top scores by black test takers. Race-based action isn’t allowed unless an employer can show “a strong basis in evidence” that it would be liable for a disparate-impact claim without taking action, the Supreme Court said in its majority decision.
Williams calls Ricci “a stark reversal” of the Supreme Court’s position in a 1979 case that upheld a corporate hiring policy of “one black for one white.” And he’s not happy with the change.
Williams acknowledges gains by minorities but cites the current unemployment rate as evidence that affirmative action died too early. The jobless rate for blacks is about double that of whites, and the rate for Latinos is about a third higher, he says.
