(Editor's note: This article was published first at Wirepoints)
The U.S. Supreme Court delivered three historic decisions Friday. The response by leading Illinois progressives insulted not just the Court but most Americans — who side with the Court. The progressive’s comments were intended to inflame division and undermine the Court’s legitimacy. They were brazenly hypocritical, and many comments included flat-out lies.
Below are some of those comments from leading Illinois progressives followed by the facts, but first, for background, here’s what the Supreme Court decisions said:
- The Harvard case, as I will call it here, ruled that racial preference in admissions to Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Constitution’s Equal Protection Clause. Affirmative action based specifically on race is now all but banned in virtually all college admissions, and the ruling likely will be applied to hiring and other racial preferences in both the public and private sectors.
- In the 303 Creative decision, the Court said a Colorado law banning discrimination on the basis of sexual preference may not be interpreted to force speech that violates one’s personal convictions. The First Amendment, the court said, requires a distinction between permissible bans on discrimination and impermissible forced speech.
- In the student loan case, the court ruled that President Biden did not have authority to forgive some student loans using Covid emergency authority. The debt Biden tried to cancel totaled about $430 billion. “Major questions” like that the Court said, must be clearly approved by Congress.
Senator Tammy Duckworth on the Harvard case: Let’s be clear: colorblindness has never been a true friend of fairness — it ignores our history and perpetuates discrimination. In ending affirmative action, today’s misguided ruling from the far-right, ultra-conservative Supreme Court is a devastating blow to progress, equity and equality for all.
Senator Dick Durbin on the 303 Creative Case: It’s nothing short of a license to discriminate, signed by the highest court in the land… The majority of Americans embrace anti-discrimination protections for LGBTQ+ people — protections that exist to ensure that no one is turned away because of who they are or who they love…. Mark my words: I will do everything I can to ensure that the freedom to exist unapologetically prevails.
Speaker of Illinois House Chris Welch on the student loan case: “Today’s decision is not only out of touch with the majority of people in this country, but it erodes the very foundation of our democracy…. Due to the work of right-wing activists on the Supreme Court, Black women and student-loan borrowers like me will have limited access to high-quality higher education, have been blocked at the ballot box and will now have to continue to carry the most significant burden of student loan debt in the country.”
Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle on the Harvard case: “Today’s ruling is one firmly rooted in racism. While not a perfect solution, affirmative action has been critical as we promote diversity and inclusion in institutions that had systematically excluded individuals on the basis of race throughout our history.”
Chicago Teachers’ Union President Stacy Gates, who is the most important political figure in Chicago besides Mayor Brandon Johnson, on the student loan case: “Instead of the blind scale of justice we tell our students the courts represent, our judiciary has become an advocate for rightwing-leaning banks, millionaires, billionaires and those who worship at the altar of white supremacy and aim to take our country back to its dark past….. If public education is the bedrock of our democracy, then today’s decision makes it clear that our democracy is under siege.”
Illinois Department of Human Rights Director Jim Bennett on the 303 Creative decision: “Today, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a ruling that betrays our nation’s values, undermines decades of settled case law that protects our marketplace from discrimination, and permits certain businesses to discriminate against historically marginalized groups simply because of who they are…. The court had an opportunity to strengthen anti-discrimination laws, but instead, it chose to harm LGBTQ people by relegating them to second-class status. They deserve far better from our nation’s highest court.”
Gov. JB Pritzker on the Harvard case: “The Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Affirmative Action is a travesty — reversing nearly 45 years of precedent that advances equity throughout our country’s higher education institutions. But here in the Land of Lincoln and Obama, we will continue to uplift our students of color — promoting inclusion and expanding access through record-levels of funding for higher education institutions and our MAP Grant Program, so that every student has the opportunity to earn a degree.”
Here’s what’s wrong in those comments:
First, it’s ruling progressives who are out of touch with most Americans. The rulings are neither “far right” nor “ultra conservative.” They reflect mainstream American thinking. A new ABC News/Ipsos poll, taken after the decisions, showed majorities or pluralities supporting all three decisions.
Earlier polling by Pew Research found much stronger opposition to racial preferences and forced speech on LGBTQ+ free speech issues. Nearly three out of four (73%) Americans said they oppose racial preference in admissions, and 60% percent said business owners should be able to refuse to provide services if doing so would suggest support for LGBTQ+ issues to which they have “personal or religious objections.”
Second, it was none other than Biden himself, who issued the attempt to forgive student loans, who earlier said unequivocally he had no authority to do so. Then-Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi said the same. Even the Washington Post said that the move was presumptively unconstitutional. Biden’s supposed authority for cancelling debt was a Covid pandemic emergency act.
“No one seriously argued that Congress ever intended or even contemplated such a massive debt forgiveness program under the Act,” wrote legal scholar Jonathan Turley. If a president wants to do something as important as forgiving nearly a half trillion of debt, he needs clear Congressional approval it, the court said. It’s called the “major question doctrine.”
Third, nothing whatsoever in the 303 Creative decision weakens nondiscrimination obligations to gays in states where they are a protected class, which is about 20 states, including Illinois. In the case, a designer making custom websites celebrating particular marriage ceremonies objected on free speech and religious ground to a law that would have forced provision of that service for gay marriages.
“How, I wonder, is this even a question?” asked Andrew Sullivan, a gay political columnist. “The idea of compelling someone to express views she does not hold and violate her deepest convictions should be utterly anathema in a free country. This is emphatically not a question of refusing service to same-sex couples in general; it’s about freedom of speech and conscience.”
Criticize that designer if you want, but that’s a different matter. They Court went to great lengths to emphasize that its ruling only applied to work that was customized and expressive. The designer did not refuse to provide generic web service to gays.
Drawing the line may be challenging in some cases, but there’s no choice but to draw the line while avoiding forced speech. The Court’s opinion says this about what would result if it held a different way:
[The government] could require ‘an unwilling Muslim movie director to make a film with a Zionist message,’ or ‘an atheist muralist to accept a commission celebrating Evangelical zeal,’ so long as they would make films or murals for other members of the public with different messages. Equally, the government could force a male website designer married to another man to design websites for an organization that advocates against same-sex marriage.
Pritzker’s comments were more restrained but he unwittingly highlighted two examples of the egregious hypocrisy in progressive criticisms of the Harvard case.
First, he said Illinois is the “land of Lincoln and Obama.” But it was none other than Barack Obama who once staunchly called for reform of affirmative action – reform that’s entirely permissible under the new Harvard ruling. Before he was president, Obama on multiple occasions, described here, said to focus on socioeconomic status, not skin color. He criticized the presumption that all whites were privileged and all blacks, Latinos, or other minorities were underprivileged.
Obama abandoned that position upon becoming president. Worse still, both he and Michelle Obama criticized the Court’s new decision. They made their criticisms while vacationing away from their mansions in California and Massachusetts, while on a luxury yacht in Greece.
Second, note that Pritzker said he would continue to help the underprivileged get through college through financial assistance like MAP grants. Yes, that kind of response is really the point of the Court’s decision. If you want to help the underprivileged then help the underprivileged, which usually doesn’t include minority kids in families that may well be on their third generation of affirmative action benefits and in the middle or upper class. Race is not determinative.
Branding the Supreme Court as right wing and racist, along with all Americans who agree with it — that’s what comments from Illinois progressives amount to.
And progressives may well rue the day they criticized the student loan decision that affirmed the “major question doctrine” limiting presidential power. If Donald Trump or anybody as vengeful as he becomes president, the firm precedent established by the student loan case will provide a powerful restraint.