The Bush Supreme Court — as I mentioned in a short post yesterday — is shaping up as a dangerous group of mostly men intent on reversing the civil and human rights advances gained through the hard work and effort of people like Thurgood Marshall and martin Luther King Jr.
The court yesterday offered a decision in two school integration cases, decisions that The New York Times called “a sad day for the court and for the ideal of racial equality.”
Since 1954, the Supreme Court has been the nation’s driving force for integration. Its orders required segregated buses and public buildings, parks and playgrounds to open up to all Americans. It wasn’t always easy: governors, senators and angry mobs talked of massive resistance. But the court never wavered, and in many of the most important cases it spoke unanimously.
Yesterday, the court’s radical new majority turned its back on that proud tradition in a 5-4 ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts. It has been some time since the court, which has grown more conservative by the year, did much to compel local governments to promote racial integration. But now it is moving in reverse, broadly ordering the public schools to become more segregated.
The LA Times echoed its New York counterpart, saying the decision “the court has dishonored its spirit.”
There are a number of troubling aspects to this ruling, including the way it foreshadows what is likely to come from this regressive court, as the NY Times points out:
Chief Justice Roberts, who assured the Senate at his confirmation hearings that he respected precedent, and Brown in particular, eagerly set these precedents aside. The right wing of the court also tossed aside two other principles they claim to hold dear. Their campaign for “federalism,” or scaling back federal power so states and localities have more authority, argued for upholding the Seattle and Louisville, Ky., programs. So did their supposed opposition to “judicial activism.” This decision is the height of activism: federal judges relying on the Constitution to tell elected local officials what to do.
So, it is likely that Brown will not be the only precedent at which the conservative majority will take aim, though they will use the language of the precedent to create the impression they are respecting it.
So, perhaps the best thing we can do is to follow Eugene Robinson‘s suggestion:
We need to realize that for the foreseeable future any progress our increasingly diverse country makes toward fairness and equality will come in spite of the nation’s highest court, not because of it.
The court, he said, “does not consider promoting racial diversity in the nation’s public schools to be a particularly worthy goal.” But, so long as President George W. Bush or someone who shares his ideology is allowed to pack the courts — both the Supreme Court and the lower courts — these are the kind of decisions we can expect.
So, as the Baltimore Sun editorialized today:
(A)nyone who thinks that presidential elections only count for four years or that Supreme Court appointments don’t matter much should pay closer attention as the Roberts’ court, with its tendency to cut back on established minority rights, comes into its own.
The only answer is to organize and vote.
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Hank Kalet 