In at least one case, for at least one time, the Biden administration is tacitly acknowledging that government cannot overtly discriminate on the basis of race.
This should have been clear 57 years ago. But better late than never.
This summer, federal judges issued three preliminary injunctions against a Biden-backed, congressionally created program that would have provided $4 billion in debt relief for farmers who are of minority ethnicities. It was a “no whites need apply” program, which clearly runs afoul of both Supreme Court case law and of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. The injunctions were thus entirely predictable and appropriate.
It is highly unusual for an administration not to appeal a preliminary injunction against a program duly passed by Congress and signed into law by a president. Yet that’s what the Biden team did — let the injunctions stand, and let the law be held in abeyance, without a court challenge. A 60-day appeals deadline passed Monday without comment from the administration.
More strangely, the administration played pass-the-buck on the issue. Politico reports that “a Justice Department spokesperson referred questions to the Agriculture Department about the lack of an appeal,” and the press office at the Agriculture Department simply changed the subject. Rather than address the failure to appeal the injunction, the Agriculture spokesman said the government would fight the lawsuits on other fronts in district courts “in the weeks and months ahead” as part of a “broader commitment to taking bold, historic action to rout out generations of systemic racism.”
Never mind, of course, that the only current “system” that fits the definition of racism is the program Biden wants to implement — the one that is awarded specifically on the basis of race. On its very face, the program is anathema to the civil rights movement’s determination to treat everyone, of all races, equally before the law. Poor farmers may deserve assistance, but if so, they deserve it because they are struggling, not because they are of a certain race.
The most famous judicial line from Chief Justice John Roberts is certainly applicable here: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
The administration was right not to appeal the injunction. Now it should stop all litigation in defense of this and other racist programs, and thus condemn them to the outer darkness.
