BREAKING: The Supreme Court has upheld the Michigan affirmative action ban, or the process of using race as a factor in college admissions.
The high court justices handed down a 6-2 ruling Tuesday that says Michigan voters had every right to change their own state constitution to ban public colleges and universities from factoring race in their admissions process. The justices struck down a lower federal court ruling, stating the court was incorrect to strike down the will of the voters based upon the legal change being discriminatory.
Justice Anthony Kennedy said voters chose to eliminate racial preferences because they deemed them unwise, adding that nowhere in the Constitution or the legal precedent is the judge granted the authority to undermine the election results.
Only Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Obama’s appointee, and Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, arguably the single-most liberal justice on the court, dissented from the majority. Sotomayor read her dissent out loud in the courtroom Tuesday, a nontraditional display that has become customary in Obama’s Supreme Court.
