Hooray! America is finally heading toward race and gender fairness
At long last, America is moving toward fairness in hiring, promotions, and college admissions.
The latest good news: In a unanimous ruling, the Supreme Court said everyone deserves the same protection from discrimination, including straight white women and men.
In the decades since Martin Luther King Jr. called on us to judge people by the 'content of their character,' this country has moved in the opposite direction. Racial preferences, Diversity Equity and Inclusion programs and quotas favoring women, LGBTQ+ and other groups replaced judging each individual.
The average white guy or woman has been getting the shaft in corporate hiring, college admissions or even becoming a government supplier.
But now that is changing. Recent events, including the Trump administration's bold disavowal of DEI and discriminatory practices in hiring and promotion, and the high court ruling in Ames v. Ohio on Thursday, suggest America is not doomed to be a hopelessly divided caste society where group identity trumps an individual's essence.
We are starting to move in the right direction, where each individual can succeed on the merits. Marlean Ames' win on Thursday is another step forward.
Ames, a 61-year-old white heterosexual woman, sued the Ohio Department of Youth Services, where she'd worked for 16 years.
Despite getting favorable reviews and promotions, in 2020 she was turned down for a higher position that went to a lesbian, and then demoted, to be replaced by another gay man. She alleged discrimination based on her heterosexuality.
Lower federal courts rejected Ames' claim , saying because she is part of a majority group — heterosexual white women — she had a higher burden of proof than a minority would have.
But the justices ruled that having different standards for majority and minority groups violates Title VII, the portion of the landmark Civil Rights Act that outlawed workplace discrimination.
Ames still has to prove her case in the lower courts, but she will be treated the same as any minority group member alleging discrimination, not facing what Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson termed a 'heightened standard' of evidence.
The Supremes' ruling will reverberate in federal courts across America. In the Sixth Circuit and four other circuits, that double standard prevailed until now. Kudos to the top court for rejecting that two-tiered system of justice.
'Reverse' discrimination is as bad as any other kind. Proving it shouldn't be harder.
Amen.
We are in a new era that began with the Supreme Court's 2023 rulings striking down reverse discrimination at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.
After George Floyd's death in 2020, many companies launched ambitious efforts to diversify their workforces. Though well-intentioned, they caused resentment and violated the nation's bedrock principle of color-blind equality.
The justices' ruling against Harvard sent a signal to the corporate world to change course.
Credit also goes to politicians — including Donald J. Trump — consumers and even corporate shareholders who challenged DEI.
Major companies began rolling back their DEI programs. Lowe's was one of the first. Now the company says it wants to be a 'unifier.'
Citigroup reports it has dropped 'diversity, equity and inclusion' from the title of its talent management team.
Home Depot, Google, Goldman Sachs and many others have publicly scrapped hiring goals based on race, ethnicity, sex or gender.
It's a big change from the recent past, when a young white man graduating from college had to worry that internships and training programs at the big financial institutions and other corporate giants wouldn't consider him because of his race and gender.
But it's good news for everyone, not just him. The six decades of concocted preferences since Martin Luther King's famous 'content of their character' speech and the harm these preferences caused should teach us that treating people differently based on the group they belong to is a mistake.
Discrimination — no matter the group and however well-intentioned — inflicts new injustices.
As Ames said, 'We're trying to make this a level playing field for everyone. Not just a white woman in Ohio.'
It's also reassuring that the unanimous opinion in Ames was crafted by Justice Jackson, the most liberal member of the court and herself often considered a DEI pick.
It's another sign that America may be coming together on the need to end such distinctions altogether, whether invidious or virtuous in intent.
Betsy McCaughey is a former lieutenant governor of New York and co-founder of the Committee to Save Our City.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Yahoo
an hour ago
- Yahoo
Washington's Supreme Court slashes public defender caseload limits
(Photo by) The state Supreme Court on Monday responded to a 'crisis' in Washington's public defense system by slashing caseloads for those providing counsel to poor defendants facing criminal prosecutions. Justices unanimously agreed to set the new statewide standards, which call for public defenders to handle a maximum of 47 felony cases or 120 misdemeanor cases in a year, depending on one's primary area of practice. The current thresholds are 150 felonies and 400 misdemeanors. The group that represents Washington counties says the new standards are unattainable with the level of funding now available and due to a shortage of lawyers. Under the court's interim order, the new caseload limits take effect Jan. 1, 2026 and should be achieved 'as soon as reasonably possible' and no later than 10 years, Chief Justice Debra Stephens wrote in the four-page order. 'The crisis in the provision of indigent criminal defense services throughout our state requires action now,' Stephens wrote for the majority. Monday's decision is a potential game-changer in the state's effort to shore up a beleaguered public defense system that struggles to provide timely, equitable and effective counsel. 'It's a bold move. I didn't expect justices to go this far,' said Larry Jefferson, director of the state's Office of Public Defense. Jefferson warned justices 18 months ago the system was on the 'verge of collapse' as cases piled up, trials backed up and over-stressed attorneys retired or resigned to work in higher-paying, less stressful jobs. He appealed to the justices for help. 'This is one of the first times that public defenders have been listened to,' Jefferson said. Some counties have had to release those accused of crimes due to the lack of available defense counsel. The ACLU of Washington sued Yakima County last year for failing to appoint attorneys for indigent people charged with crimes. Hiring more public defenders costs money. Cities and counties worry they also will need to amp up hiring of court staff and prosecutors to keep pace and that will be expensive. 'What they are describing here is impossible with our current budget constraints,' said Derek Young, executive director of the Washington State Association of Counties. 'There's not nearly enough workforce now. If we triple the demand for services, where will all these lawyers come from?' 'There is no timeline we can accommodate this absent the Legislature waking up' and providing greater financial support, he said. The new state budget provides $20 million for counties, he said, which is about 6% of their total public defense costs. Standards the state Supreme Court adopted in 2012 said a full-time public defense attorney or assigned counsel should have no more than 150 felony cases a year. In 2023, the American Bar Association, the National Center for State Courts and the RAND Justice Policy Program released the National Public Defense Workload Study. It concluded public defenders should handle far fewer cases. That year, Washington's high court asked the Washington State Bar Association to weigh in on whether the cap needed adjusting in light of the findings. The association responded in March 2024, recommending new maximums of 47 felony credits or 120 misdemeanor credits in a year, depending on the severity of the charges. The reduction would be phased in over three years. Under that approach, the cap for felony cases would be 120 in the first year, 90 in the second and 47 in the third. For misdemeanors, the limit would be 280 cases in the first year, dropping to 225 and then 120. As part of its proposal, the association assigned crimes credits based on seriousness and complexity of providing a legal defense. A motor vehicle theft was assigned one credit and a murder seven, for example. That means a lawyer could theoretically be assigned 47 vehicle theft or seven homicide cases in a year before hitting their limit. Such case weighting is 'permissible and encouraged' but not required, Stephens wrote for the court. If done, a local government should adopt and publish any policies and procedures underlying the use of such weighting, Stephens wrote. The Supreme Court started accepting public comment on the bar association's request to trim caseloads a year ago, while also holding public hearings and internal work sessions. In each hearing, prosecutors argued reducing caseloads would lead to filing of fewer cases to ensure no one's rights to counsel are violated. 'Without sufficient attorneys or without sufficient resources, it would lead to a de facto decriminalization and an increase in vigilantism,' Russell Brown, executive director of the Washington Association of Prosecuting Attorneys, said in September. He added that 'way too many' people have had their cases dismissed or not filed because of a lack of public defenders. Supporters of reducing caseloads said in the hearings that the change is needed to stabilize the system. They contend that large caseloads and low pay are driving people out of public defense and deterring new lawyers from entering this line of legal work. And they, too, pointed to the problem in some counties where those accused of crimes, but unable to afford a lawyer, can wait long periods of time before they receive counsel. 'Public defense is in a downward spiral. We can fix this,' said Jason Schwarz, director of the Snohomish County Office of Public Defense and chair of the Washington State Bar Association's Council on Public Defense in September. 'This will be expensive. Justice is not cheap.' The order issued Monday isn't the final word. New rules are needed to put the caseload figures in place. And the bar association made other recommendations on subjects like staffing and training that justices are still considering. But the justices wanted to put out caseload information because they knew local governments are putting together their budgets for next year, Stephens wrote in the order.
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Americans are starting to learn who ‘Maryland father' Abrego Garcia really is
For a while, the favored moniker for Kilmar Abrego Garcia in the media was 'Maryland father.' Abrego Garcia was indeed living in Maryland and was indeed a father, but this wasn't what was most distinctive thing about him. There are hundreds of thousands of fathers living in the state who aren't illegal immigrants and don't have ties to criminal gangs. Abrego Garcia, of course, is the man who was mistakenly deported to the notorious CECOT prison in El Salvador despite a judge's order that he couldn't be deported there. Instead of quickly asking for Abrego Garcia to be sent back to the United States, the Trump administration dug in its heels and suffered repeated legal setbacks, including at the Supreme Court. Sensing political opportunity and appalled at the notion of someone living in the US being sent, based on no criminal charges, to perhaps the most inhumane prison in the Western Hemisphere, Democrats made Abrego Garcia a cause. They inevitably downplayed the drip-drip evidence that he was an unsympathetic character. It emerged that he had been picked up by local police in 2019 at a Home Depot years ago and the cops suspected that he and his associates were gang members. It emerged that his wife accused him of abusing her. It emerged that he'd been stopped in Tennessee in suspicious circumstances in 2022 with multiple men in the vehicle. Whether Abrego Garcia was a good guy or a reprobate, a member of MS-13 or of his church choir, had no bearing on whether he should have been imprisoned in El Salvador with our active support. The answer to that was 'no' regardless, but now that the Trump administration has brought him back to the United States and filed charges against him, the 'Maryland father' description has been exposed as ludicrously inapt. According to a Department of Justice indictment, Abrego Garcia routinely engaged in human smuggling, transporting illegal aliens within the United States on more than 100 occasions. The facts set out in the indictment regarding the Tennessee traffic stop are particularly damning. Abrego Garcia's story was that the men in his Suburban had been working construction in St. Louis for two weeks and he was bringing them back to Maryland. The men, all lacking identification, had no luggage or construction tools. The vehicle was outfitted with a makeshift third row for passengers in the back. All of which was suspicious enough. What's more, the indictment says, license-plate tracking data showed that the car hadn't been anywhere close to St. Louis in the past year. It had, however, been in the Houston, Texas, area, where the prosecutors say the illegal-alien passengers had been picked up. The administration will have to prove its charges in court, and if they have been exaggerated in the cause of nailing Abrego Garcia, that will presumably be exposed. The facts matter, and Abrego Garcia never should have been made into a mere symbol. The administration seemed to think keeping him in El Salvador somehow furthered the cause of immigration enforcement, but whether Abrego Garcia stayed there or came back to the United States wasn't going to materially affect deportation efforts one way or the other. For their part, Trump's critics — yet again — assumed because someone was targeted by the president, he or she must be a figure of righteousness. The fact of the matter is that Abrego Garcia never should have been in the United States in the first place. He came here illegally in 2012. Only after he was picked up by police in the aforementioned 2019 stop and put in deportation proceedings did he make a meritless asylum claim. An immigration judge nevertheless granted him a withholding of removal and Abrego Garcia was permitted to go about his business, which, according to the Justice Department, was smuggling other illegal immigrants. We'll learn more as the case proceeds, but we know enough already to conclude that this isn't a typical or commendable Marylander. Twitter: @RichLowry
New York Post
2 hours ago
- New York Post
Amid the horrific rise in Jew-hatred, the US Holocaust Museum must reexamine its role
The murders of Yaron Lischinsky and Sarah Milgrim in Washington and the attack on Jewish seniors, including Holocaust survivor Barbara Steinmetz, in Boulder, Colo., remind us that the lessons of the Holocaust remain unlearned. The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum can help teach those lessons — if it concentrates on antisemitism as opposed to other hatreds, as it should, and goes beyond the Nazi horror. Advertisement Recall that the Holocaust occurred in European countries where ordinary citizens cooperated or stood indifferent to the mass murders of their neighbors. Today, after decades of proclaiming 'never again,' antisemitism in the US has hit a frightening new peak. The Holocaust Museum is supposed to educate about the dangers of antisemitism. Advertisement But as a proud member of its council, I know first-hand that it needs to do much more to fulfill that important role. The museum's weak connection to the Jewish people stems from its design, created when antisemitism seemed a thing of the past. Since then, it has shifted focus to combatting other forms of hate. The museum also provides no context of Jewish history before 1930 or after 1945. Advertisement And a planned multimillion-dollar renovation of the main exhibit hall could make the museum even more woke and disconnected. Frankly, the operation is in danger of becoming a liberal monument to the dangers of immigration enforcement and conservative politics. What the museum should be doing instead is teaching Americans that antisemitism is the world's oldest hatred, dating back 4,000 years when Nimrod is said to have thrown Abraham into a fiery furnace, and gaining steam with the rise of Christianity. More important, the museum needs to teach the story of Jewish survival; the founding of Israel in 1948, the wars of 1967 and 1973, and the Oct. 7, 2023, massacre. Advertisement It should cover pogroms that spurred the Zionist movement, helping make the case for the existence of a Jewish state. And it should emphasize America's cherished opportunities for Holocaust survivors and their families. Nineteen months after the deadliest day for Jews since the Holocaust, the museum lacks focus on the ongoing crisis. It reaches thousands of teachers and visitors but teaches broadly about hate, and not enough about antisemitism in particular. It fails, for example, to address antisemitism's recent surge, particularly at US universities. A Harvard-Harris poll in April found 51% of American 18- to 24-year-olds favored Hamas over Israel. Clearly, the museum needs to do a better job of reaching and teaching young people about Israel, Jewish history and current events. Indeed, no metric shows the museum contributing to any reduction in antisemitism. Sadly, all signs suggest it is failing in this regard. Advertisement The good news: President Donald Trump has made combatting antisemitism a priority and has begun cleaning house at the museum. Last month, he removed several Biden appointees, including Ron Klain, Doug Emhoff, Tom Perez, Susan Rice, Jon Finer and Anthony Bernal, none of whom were suited for the council. Rice had politicized Biden's National Strategy to Combat Antisemitism by excluding anti-Zionism and including Islamophobia. Advertisement Finer called members of the Israeli government 'abhorrent,' slamming it at a meeting with Arab American leaders in Dearborn, Mich., last year. Emhoff, appointed just three days before Trump took office, resisted his removal, claiming it 'dishonors the memory of 6 million Jews murdered by Nazis that this museum was created to preserve.' That's nonsense: Replacing these partisan figures has nothing to do with the 6 million murdered Jews, the Holocaust survivors or their descendants. On the other hand, the new council members appointed by President Trump will bring expertise from their careers as well as their skills and their important values. Advertisement Again, the US Holocaust Museum was created to preserve the memory of the Shoah and protect future generations from violent antisemitism. To accomplish this at a time when Jews face their biggest threats in decades requires greater oversight by the council and a broader, bolder outlook that addresses today's emerging problems. It's time to rethink the facility's role and what it is supposed to do to combat antisemitism. Advertisement It's time make the US Holocaust Museum great again. Martin Oliner, a lawyer and the son of Holocaust survivors, was mayor of Lawrence village from 2010 to 2016.
