Donald Trump and his administration repeatedly warned Academia to drop its discriminatory approach to hiring and admissions. The Supreme Court warned Academia to do the same. Most business entities smelled the coffee and began distancing themselves from DEI practices. Rather than recognize that the time for discrimination on the basis of ethnicity had passed, universities dug in their heels, perhaps none more so than Harvard.
More than three years after the Supreme Court decision that ended the legal shield for discrimination via "affirmative action," schools now risk paying a steep price for defying the 14th Amendment and the Department of Education:
The Trump administration released new rules that could revoke tax-exempt status from any school offering targeted support to Black or other minority students, a sweeping change that opens another front in the president’s campaign to reshape American education.
The proposed regulations, which the Treasury Department published on Thursday, would add another element to the guidelines schools and other organizations must follow to qualify for tax-exempt status with the Internal Revenue Service. The rules would deny tax-exempt status to any school, including secondary schools and universities, if it has any policy or program, including admissions and scholarships, that the I.R.S. finds to be racially discriminatory.
Such a change would thrust the I.R.S. into the center of the Trump administration’s effort to pressure schools to abandon initiatives aimed at supporting Black and other minority students. Trump officials view such programs as a form of discrimination against white and Asian Americans, and federal civil rights lawyers have opened investigations on those grounds into admissions policies at Harvard, Yale and other schools.
Ahem. Programs that make preferential choices based on skin color and ethnicity are objectively discriminatory. Schools that engage in this practice discriminate to ration admissions on immutable characteristics rather than demonstrated ability or competency. It's the very definition of discrimination, and it always has been, even when courts tolerated it as a time-limited curative for previous discrimination.
The Supreme Court agreed in 2023 in a case that directly involved Harvard:
Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. Accordingly, the Court has held that the Equal Protection Clause applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality”— it is “universal in [its] application.” Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 369. For “[t]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 289–290.
Any exceptions to the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee must survive a daunting two-step examination known as “strict scrutiny,” Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227, which asks first whether the racial classification is used to “further compelling governmental interests,” Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 326, and second whether the government’s use of race is “narrowly tailored,” i.e., “necessary,” to achieve that interest, Fisher v. University of Tex. at Austin, 570 U. S. 297, 311–312. Acceptance of race-based state action is rare for a reason: “[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people whose institutions are founded upon the doctrine of equality.” Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517. Pp. 9–16. …
But the Court has permitted race-based college admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions: such admissions programs must comply with strict scrutiny, may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and must—at some point—end. Respondents’ admissions systems fail each of these criteria and must therefore be invalidated under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 21–34.
“Eliminating racial discrimination,” Chief Justice John Roberts added at the time in his ruling, “means eliminating all of it.”
Harvard and other schools keep defying the law and the Constitution even in light of this ruling, but that has its own consequences. Bob Jones University defied the law in the early 1980s by maintaining its discriminatory (and frankly weird) ban on interracial relationships at the school. The IRS revoked its tax-exempt status in response, and the Supreme Court set that as an explicit precedent for obstinate refusal to end discriminatory practices:
The Trump administration said the tax regulations would draw on a 1983 Supreme Court case that found an organization could not receive tax-exempt status if it was in opposition to a “fundamental public policy.” In that case, the I.R.S. revoked the tax-exempt status of Bob Jones University, a conservative Christian school, because the school had a policy banning interracial relationships. The Supreme Court upheld the I.R.S. decision because “racial discrimination in education violates a fundamental public policy.”
Many people on the Left, and some of us on the Right, cheered that decision. Tax exemption is not a right, and entities that act in repudiation of the law are not entitled to remain exempt. Now that the Ivy Leagues et al have decided to keep up with the Joneses, the reaction to that will be ... instructive, to say the least.
And it matters, especially in an era where the bubble around Academia already appears to be collapsing:
While schools may still not owe much in federal income taxes even if they lost their tax-exempt status, the exemption is valuable because it allows donors to deduct donations they make directly to the school, helping fund-raising efforts. The rules will take effect after May 31 and apply to as many as 18,000 schools, the Treasury said.
Alums may be less generous as a result, putting at risk the jobs of thousands of useless administrators across Academia, not to mention the High Priests and Priestesses of the Marxist cults they help maintain. They can't say they weren't warned.
Editor’s Note: Hollywood, academia, and liberal elites are out of touch with the average American.
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