Charles Krauthammer, Juan Williams Spar over SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling

Charles Krauthammer, Juan Williams Spar over SCOTUS Affirmative Action Ruling

On Tuesday’s “Special Report” on the Fox News Channel during the program’s “All-Star Panel” segment, network contributors Steve Hayes, Juan Williams and Charles Krauthammer reacted to the announcement the Supreme Court had upheld the state of Michigan’s affirmative action ban.

Krauthammer explained the decision was consistent because it had allowed for the states to determine affirmative action policy.

“This decision is perfectly consistent with a contrary decision the court made 11 years ago in Michigan where there was a case to abolish affirmative action in admission to the University of Michigan Law School,” he said. “The court said that we are not going to strike it down. We’re not going to have nine robes decide that this cannot be implemented. But what it implied was it would allow the people in a democracy to decide that.”

“The people responded exactly as suggested implicitly in that decision when three years later they had a referendum that would abolish affirmative action,” he continued. “Eleven years later, with now a case brought by the left and not the right, the left is trying to institutionalize affirmative action to make it impossible for any legislation or any referendum ever to abolish ever in the history of the country. Essentially to say it’s an intrinsic part of the Constitution, racial preferences are here forever. An outrageous proposition, and that was rejected by the court. It said we’re not going to rule that it’s intrinsically in the constitution, just as 11 years ago we didn’t want to rule that it’s not allowed.”

Williams reacted to Krauthammer’s argument by explaining there is still a need to protect not just individuals, but racial minorities despite the consensus of voters.

“But I think you have to protect the individual,” Williams said. “And I think that is what you’re hearing from Sotomayor. And I think there’s a concern here – it’s not just the individual. In this case there are racial minorities.”

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