Is the executive branch obligated to enforce the Supreme Court&#39;s decision on affirmative action? The Supreme Court ruled, on June 29, 2023, that under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, universities are obligated to treat all applicants fairly and not discriminate on the basis of race. Does this compel the executive branch to actually implement the ruling in practice? I.e. could the Biden administration declare that they’ll ignore all affirmative action related violations and not take away funding from any institutions that engage in such practices? As a related example, marijuana is illegal in the US but this doesn’t mean that the government is forced to prosecute anyone for selling weed. Could a similar policy apply to colleges?
The judgment in Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President and Fellow of Harvard College, 600 U.S. ___ (2023) was in relation to relief sought by the plaintiffs against Harvard and University of North Carolina. This is more apparent by reading the judgments below. See e.g. 397 F. Supp. 3d 126 (D. Mass. 2019). SFFA seeks &quot;declaratory judgment, injunctive relief, attorneys' fees, and costs&quot; against the defendant &quot;President and Fellows of Harvard College (Harvard Corporation).&quot; SFFA sought the same remedies against University of North Carolina: 567 F. Supp. 3d 580 (M.D.N.C. 2021). Thus, there is no order against the federal executive. The federal executive can continue providing funding. It is Harvard and U.N.C. that are enjoined.
No, absent a state law to the contrary (and I am aware of no such law in this case) it is not illegal. Universities, as institutions, are permitted to express opinions on political issues, especially political issues that are pertinent to their operations. Indeed, they often do so. (Political candidates are arguably a different matter and certainly involve a more complex analysis to determine if the Johnson Amendment applies to a public university, but that isn't at issue in this case.) Governmental entities may not take religious positions, but may take political ones. Generally, even public colleges like Rutgers have this autonomy. Indeed, lobbying is frequently necessary for the survival of a public university - it has no choice but to lobby and a free hand regarding the issues upon which it does lobby.
They can't overturn the decision; but they don't have to. The holding in Dobbs was that the US Constitution does not provide a right to an abortion, and so a state law prohibiting abortions is not unconstitutional. Congress can't &quot;overturn&quot; it in the sense that they can't make the Constitution provide such a right, short of a constitutional amendment. But that in itself doesn't stop them from providing such a right in other ways, e.g. through ordinary legislation. Under the Supremacy Clause, such a law would supersede any state bans; provided that it falls within the scope of Congress's enumerated powers, which assertion would itself probably be challenged in court. If it's within their legislative power, then there's no conflict with Dobbs. To give a more mundane example, nobody thinks that there is a constitutional right to have an airline ticket refunded within 24 hours of purchase. If the Supreme Court ever had occasion to rule on the question, they would surely hold that nothing in the US Constitution says that people have this right. But Congress does have the power, under the Commerce Clause, to pass legislation that confers such a right on consumers. They have done so, and this law would not in any way conflict with the aforementioned hypothetical Supreme Court ruling.
The US Constitution doesn't say one way or the other how a state's representatives are to be chosen, so until this law was passed in 1841, a state could have all of their representatives elected at-large, without districts. It is only recently that SCOTUS has gotten involved in redistricting questions: here is a summary of leading redistricting rulings. A recurring theme in these rulings has been the Equal Protection Clause, where certain redistricting plans (or non-plans) were found to violate that clause (especially ordering a state to redistrict when it refused to do so with the result being that population changes diluted the vote of those living in certain districts). Wesberry v. Sanders, 376 U.S. 1 held that The constitutional requirement in Art. I, § 2,that Representatives be chosen &quot;by the People of the several States&quot; means that, as nearly as is practicable, one person's vote in a congressional election is to be worth as much as another's thus redistricting is a justiciable question, answerable with respect to the federal government's need to enforce the 14th Amendment. It is not necessary to amend the Constitution further to specify a means of enforcing that clause.
In Torcaso v. Watkins, 367 U.S. 488 (1961), the US Supreme Court ruled unanimously that a similar provision in Maryland's constitution violated the First Amendment and could not be enforced. So presumably the North Carolina provision is similarly unconstitutional and unenforceable. It's not clear why it wasn't removed in 1971. I found references to a 2009 incident in which an avowed atheist named Cecil Bothwell was elected to the Asheville, NC city council. Opponents apparently threatened to mount a legal challenge to his eligibility under the Article VI provision. It's not clear if they actually tried to do so, but in any event, Bothwell served his full four-year term and was then re-elected for another.
From the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) website: An employer must have a certain number of employees to be covered by the laws we enforce. This number varies depending on the type of employer (for example, whether the employer is a private company, a state or local government agency, a federal agency, an employment agency, or a labor union) and the kind of discrimination alleged (for example, discrimination based on a person's race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy), national origin, age (40 or older), disability or genetic information). All employers are covered, whether or not a particular regulation covers a particular employer is dependent on the number of employees. For example, age discrimination is covered by employers who have more than 20 employees and Equal Pay Act coverage is for virtually all employers. From the same web site: People who are not employed by the employer, such as independent contractors, are not covered by the anti-discrimination laws. Figuring out whether or not a person is an employee of an organization (as opposed to a contractor, for example) is complicated. If you aren't sure whether a person covered, you should contact one of our field offices as soon as possible so we can make that decision. The EEOC has regulations covering: Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 The Pregnancy Discrimination Act The Equal Pay Act of 1963 The Age Discrimination in Employment Act of 1967 Title I of the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 Sections 102 and 103 of the Civil Rights Act of 1991 Sections 501 and 505 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 The Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act of 2008 The EEOC is an agency responsible for creating rules and regulations and enforcing civil rights laws against workplace discrimination. The regulations and enforcement actions are based on a large number of laws, any one of which may or may not apply to a particular employer. Exemptions are based on a particular anti-discrimination law, not on the agency itself. Each anti-discrimination law has a different set of entities to which the law applies and different sets of exemptions.
No Only the ratio decidendi of a case sets binding precedent. By definition, that has to be in the decision of the court’s majority because that’s what decided the case. If a minority decision disagrees with the majority on ratio, then the majority is the binding precedent. If the point is obiter, then it’s merely persuasive, not binding, irrespective of where it is.
The employer might be liable for a discrimination claim, under the doctrine of disparate impact. See Texas Department of Housing &amp; Community Affairs v. The Inclusive Communities Project, Inc and references cited therein. The idea is that an employer can be liable absent proof of intentional discrimination when a practice disproportionately affects protected classes of individuals, and the practice is not justified by reasonable business considerations. So it would depend on why this particular state of affairs in employment came about. There is a test known as the 80% rule which attempts to quantify the notion of "under-representation" as evidence of discrimination. This test (not widely respected by the courts these days) might constitute evidence of discrimination, if a protected class is demonstrably under-represented. The current standard seems to be by comparison to random selection. In EEOC v. Sambo's of Georgia, Inc., 530 F. Supp. 86, the court found that a grooming policy had a disparate impact on members of a religion (Sikhism), and was thus contrary to Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, although a requirement to shave does not obviously discriminate on the basis of religion. This points to an important element of a successful disparate impact claim, that there has to be a policy with a causal effect. In the above scenario, there is no proposed policy that has this effect. Note that the burden of proof is on the person suing for relief – they must have a theory of something the company does that causes this hiring pattern, a practice that is discriminatory. The identified policy (whatever it might be) could be justified by a business necessity defense (Griggs v. Duke Power Co., 401 U.S. 424), by showing that the practice has a demonstrable relationship to the requirements of the job. That, b.t.w., would not excuse a racially or religiously discriminatory hiring policy for a factory manufacturing menorahs or kinaras. If a company recruiting locally in Boise ID had a 75% black work force, it would be reasonable to suspect that something was up. But legally, without showing that this results from a unjustified policy of the company, mere statistically anomalous distribution is does not sustain a claim of discrimination.