Racial Equality Loses at the Court; New York Times, 4/22/14

Editorial Board, New York Times; Racial Equality Loses at the Court:

"In the most eloquent part of her dissent, Justice Sotomayor rightly took aim at the conservative members of the court, who speak high-mindedly of racial equality even as they write off decades-old precedent meant to address the lingering effects of “centuries of racial discrimination” — a view that is “out of touch with reality.” The reality, she wrote, is that “race matters.”

In response to her pointed rebuke, Chief Justice John Roberts Jr. wrote a terse concurrence chiding Justice Sotomayor for questioning her colleagues’ “openness and candor.” Yet the chief justice’s own words on race show no true understanding of what she called America’s “long and lamentable record” of rigging the political game against racial minorities. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race,” he wrote glibly in a 2007 case striking down school integration efforts in Washington and Kentucky. “Things have changed dramatically” 50 years after the Voting Rights Act, he wrote last year in Shelby County v. Holder, which struck down a provision of that act."