Following SCOTUS Affirmative Action Decision, Ranking Member Scott Urges ED to Protect Racial Equity in Education

Press Release

"Title VI was enacted to ensure the federal government stood with Americans historically discriminated against on the basis of their race, color, or national origin. Over the last 60 years, a conservative federal judiciary has slowly warped a law designed to ensure Americans of every race have equal footing in our society into one that bans any consideration of race at all. This perversion of intent reached a new low with the decisions in the recent Harvard and University of North Carolina (UNC) cases overturning the consideration of race as one of many factors IHEs may use in their admissions process.

Now that the Supreme Court has determined that the consideration of race in admissions violates Title VI and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Department should fully investigate how race unjustly permeates many other policies and practices in our educational system. Any honest assessment of the pervasiveness of race in that system would recognize that people of color consistently face unequal discriminatory treatment on the basis of their race, treatment that has been historically counterbalanced by affirmative actions, but now can only be eliminated with robust enforcement of Title VI."

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