June 29, 2023 – NMAC policy expert Toni Newman released the following statement condemning the Supreme Court’s ruling overturning affirmative action in higher education in the Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina cases:
“The United States Supreme Court’s decision to overturn decades of precedent supporting affirmative action is going to cause irreparable harm to Black and brown communities, and the damage will not be limited to college admissions offices.
“The Minority AIDS Initiative, or MAI, was created in 1998 to provide critical and life-saving funding to minority-led HIV organizations. Unfortunately, the George W. Bush administration gutted it in 2004, citing a Supreme Court ruling that sharply limited how affirmative action could be used in federally-funded programs. The Bush administration’s move shuttered many of those minority-led HIV organizations around the country, and today people of color account for a vast majority of HIV transmissions in America.
“The lesson is clear: MAI was gutted with affirmative action in place, and today’s SCOTUS ruling clears the way for it to be potentially eliminated altogether. This conservative majority on the Supreme Court has shown, once again, that it’s willing to target the health, safety and dignity of our country’s most vulnerable populations without consideration for the damage those rulings will do or for the people who will suffer as a result.”