“Graduated in four years while being an academic tutor, resident assistant, peer mentor, and involved in many on campus organizations including Texas Orange Jackets”, she told me.
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But the votes of those two justices (and others who spoke) haven’t been much in doubt. “And now a Republican-appointed justice endorsing racist ideas from the Supreme Court bench”.
Recusal, however, is exclusively up to the justice. “That is a generalization of a race”.
While occupying a seat on the highest court in the land, Justice Scalia insulted and demeaned African-Americans while resorting to a racist stereotype that goes back as far as slavery.
This was the second hearing in the Fisher v. Texas case. However, a challenge to the original ruling is bringing the case before the Court yet again. As Slate points out, Title 28, Section 455 of U.S. Code says a judge should recuse him or herself from a case whenever there is conflict of interest, such as a pre-formed opinion or the involvement of a family member.
In a 2013 argument over a MI voter referendum that would prevent the use of race in college admissions, Scalia said the 14th Amendment “protects all races”, not “only the blacks”. The court’s only Hispanic, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, defended the Texas program and, after listing university data supporting its use, asked Fisher’s attorney, “What more do they need”.
The Top 10 program is inadequate, he said, because it is a blunt instrument and a product of widespread segregation in Texas high schools.
He added in that black college students come from “lesser schools, where they do not feel in that they’re being pushed ahead in classes in that are too swift for them”.
Scalia’s argument did not sit well with many black students and graduates succeeding in prestigious schools. He expressed frustration that the university lawyers were unable to quantify the role race plays in shaping which students are admitted. Justice Scalia’s bias toward the plaintiffs was clear when he stated, “maybe [the University of Texas] ought to have fewer” African Americans. And maybe … when you take more, the number of blacks, really competent blacks admitted to lesser schools, turns out to be less. He said that opponents were trying to “kill affirmative action through a death by a thousand cuts”.
The justice was alluding to the hotly debated “mismatch” theory, the idea that students given a leg up when applying to competitive universities because of racial consideration are more likely to fail than if they had gone to a less competitive school with similarly prepared students.
Most observers saw three possible lines of actions, based on the long run-up to the arguments and some of the Justice’s comments.
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“The idea that African-American students are somehow inherently intellectually inferior from other students is despicable”, Reid said on the Senate floor. “They found new ways to create it, and in some ways better methods, given that they will benefit economically-disadvantaged students of all races”.
