>>> "Michael Hoover" <hoov at freenet.tlh.fl.us> 10/16/99 05:39PM >>>
> The current U.S. Supreme Court argument against affirmative action is based
> on the fundamental anti-racist law of the land, the 14th Amendment to the
> Constitution passed after the Civil War. The 14th Amendment was the basis
> for the legal aspects of the Civil Rights movement in the 1950's. Then,
> when the Reaganite Supreme Court came in, it used the same 14th Amendment
> to find affirmative action is illegal as reverse discrimination against
> whites by blacks .
> CB
Current court has declared in several cases that affirmative action programs must be subject to most searching judicial inquiry ('strict scrutiny') and must be 'narrowly tailored' to achieve a 'compelling government interest.' Few, if any, programs can satisfy this court's stringent requirements for constitutionality.
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Charles: Yes, the strict scrutiny test for suspect classifications is the one developed by the Warren Court for race discrimination cases under the 14th Amendment. As Michael says, once strict scrutiny is applied , it is rarely met. On the other hand, the lesser rational relation test for laws that discriminate based on non-suspect classifications, is almost always met.
( To make this less abstract , maybe, laws make discriminations all of the time, but most are not considered invidious, like discriminations based on race. For example, a law on speeding discriminates between those driving at 75 vs those driving at 65. This is a non-suspect classification and non-invidious discrimination).
The Court has not found gender to be a full suspect classification. It is in between rational relation/ and strict scrutiny. ( If we go along with this whole approach, gender should be a full suspect classification)
In a late Warren Court case, _San Antionio School District_, the Court , by 5 to 4 found class/income not to be a suspect classification. That would have been a borderline socialist revolution if they had made class a suspect classification. No such luck. CB