The official explanation for bringing the case now, more than 10 years after the Ninth Circuit upheld the law and the Supreme Court took a pass, is that “the legal environment has changed” considering the result in Grutter v. Bollinger.  But seriously, that case was decided in 2003!  That was even before Roberts and Alito happened to us!  Back then, we didn’t even know it was possible to put two different flavors of Doritos in one bag!  (Never forget.)

Anyway, I predict doom and gloom for this legal challenge.  The advantage of the time that’s passed is that the plaintiffs can make out a better claim of disparate impact by showing the dismal state of minority enrollment at UC schools (I’m a two-time UCLA student post-Prop 209, and I can attest: dismal).  Unfortunately, disparate impact apparently no longer exists in Supreme Court jurisprudence (see that firefighters case), and taking a stand based on Grutter is like what the Coyote would do right before he realized he had chased the Road Runner a little bit past the cliff’s edge.  That case was a challenge by a white student miffed at affirmative action in admissions (aka Ward Connerly’s protege), not the other way around, and the admissions policy there was upheld on narrow grounds that had nothing to do with a historical understanding of race-based subordination.  No way does will that case be applied to overturn a voter referendum that has been in place since the time when Garth Brooks was cool.

By the way, one of the attorneys for the group bringing the challenge is named George Washington.  (I bet he gets a lot of “crossing the Potomac” jokes.)

But best of luck to you, George Washington & Co.  Hopefully you make it in spite of the odds.

-AS

It came out in oral argument that one question asked firefighters whether fire equipment should be parked “uptown, downtown or underground when arriving at a fire” even though New Haven doesn’t have an uptown or downtown. (Apparently some of the questions were based on questions relevant to New York City firefighters.) Not that that matters, since everyone knows you park your equipment underground when arriving at a fire.

In lieu of evidence to the contrary, I like to imagine the New Haven test was a hybrid of Stuff White People Like and a discriminatory SAT question, and looked something like this:

1. You arrive at a yacht that is engulfed in flames in the marina. The yacht owner tells you his wife is trapped aft. The yacht owner means his wife is trapped:

A) In the front of the yacht.
B) In the back of the yacht.
C) On the left side of the yacht.
D) On the right side of the yacht.
E) Under the yacht.

2. A panicked homeowner asks you to save “the greatest Bruce Springsteen album in existence” from the upstairs bedroom of his burning home. When you get upstairs you see five Springsteen albums. Which do you grab?

A) Darkness on the Edge of Town
B) The Rising
C) Born to Run
D) The River
E) Nebraska

-AS

The Scalia-led majority held that the 6th Amend. Confrontation Clause was violated by the prosecution’s offering into evidence a lab technician’s “certificate” attesting to the fact that a substance was cocaine in lieu of calling the tech as a witness.

DA offices are calling the decision a train wreck. Since government testing labs are way behind on their testing already, the delays will inevitably get a lot worse if the lab techs who do the tests have to spend a lot of time in courthouses waiting to testify. Especially in less-populated states where one or two labs may do testing for the entire state, and especially when substances are sent to FBI labs in Wash. DC for analysis, the financial ramifications may put prosecutions as far out of reach for the government as Bentley cars are for law professors.

-AS