In a Scathing Dissent, Justice Jackson Slams ‘Let-Them-Eat-Cake Obliviousness’ of Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Decision

With its ruling in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, the Supreme Court has effectively killed the process of affirmative action in higher education. The decision does not just allow universities to avoid considering race in their admissions processes, it outright bars them from doing so.

In this case (together with Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina—essentially the same case but for public schools), the conservative justices each gave their own defense for issuing this major blow to civil rights, but they all seemed to agree that they just don’t think a little thing like generations of institutional racism is a big enough deal to consider in college admissions.

The idea that schools won’t consider race in admissions is, of course, a fallacy. It will just only give a boost to white men.

Justices Sotomayor, Kagan, and Jackson dissented in the case. Sotomayor and Jackson both wrote dissenting opinions but Jackson’s is especially scathing. She does not hold back in making it clear just how much disdain she has for what she calls the “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” of the majority opinion.

Here’s the full quote that line is taken from. The entire passage is unrelenting and accurate:

With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.

No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal racelinked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.

You can read Justice Jackson’s entire dissent (starting on page 209) as well as Justice Sotomayor’s (page 140) and the rest of the opinions here.

(featured image: Alex Wong/Getty Images)

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Vivian Kane

Vivian Kane (she/her) is the Senior News Editor at The Mary Sue, where she's been writing about politics and entertainment (and all the ways in which the two overlap) since the dark days of late 2016. Born in San Francisco and radicalized in Los Angeles, she now lives in Kansas City, Missouri, where she gets to put her MFA to use covering the local theatre scene. She is the co-owner of The Pitch, Kansas City’s alt news and culture magazine, alongside her husband, Brock Wilbur, with whom she also shares many cats.

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