The Supreme Court set out today to roll us back 53 years and to bygone era where it is ok to segregate schools based on race. The dark days of blatant and in your face racism are coming back, thanks to Justices Alito, Thomas, Roberts, Scalia and Kennedy. The implications of this decision are unfathomable. Equality for all Americans is an essential prerequisite for our democracy and the Supreme Court is against that. Parents Involved in Community Schools Inc. v. Seattle School District and Meredith v. Jefferson County (Ky.) Board of Education is a lengthy term but just as memorable as Brown v. Board of Education.
From The Washington Post:
The court's four liberals delivered a scathing dissent -- twice as long as Roberts's opinion. It said the plurality's decision was, in the words of Justice Stephen G. Breyer, who read his opposition from the bench, a "cruel distortion" of the court's landmark decision more than 50 years ago in Brown v. Board of Education, which demanded an end to segregated schools."This is a decision that the court and the nation will come to regret," Breyer said.
Roberts, too, had used the decision in Brown as a basis for today's opinion.
"Before Brown, schoolchildren were told where they could and could not go to school based on the color of their skin," Roberts wrote. "The school districts in these cases have not carried the heavy burden of demonstrating that we should allow this once again -- even for very different reasons."
This is already regrettable Justice Breyer. Chief Justice Roberts is either a fool or a villain for using it in his opinion as well. If he thinks that race is not an important hurdle that our society has to overcome even in 2007, his world is limited to the small bubble that shields him from the real world.
I think Roberts is a smart guy, it is hard for a fool to get to lead the highest court in the land. I suspect his motivations for the decision are far more nefarious than we can imagine. He is a neo-con that believes the same way as his masters who helped put him up there. PNAC and those that follow the grand neo-conservative plan want to see government fall back from protecting essential freedoms and protections for minorities (unless that minority is the white wealthy elite).
Democrats have issued warnings that a Bush Presidency would unimaginably alter the Supreme Court for the worse. We had no idea how right they were.
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