Be aware, when you read Adam Parkhomenko’s tweet, screen captured at the left, that his Twitter biography states that he is a “Dem Strategist. Dad to Cameron, Paxton, Moose and Simba. Former DNC National Field Director, Hillary advisor and more.”

The distinguished Mr Parkhomenko is upset, angry, waxing wroth, because President Donald Trump is ending DEI, the “Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion” programs that the Federal government has been using to base hiring and promotions not on ability or job performance, but whether a prospective candidate is a member of an Accredited Victim Group™.

In the 2003 decision Grutter v Bollinger, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that Affirmative Action plans had to come to an end, that the ‘exception’ the Supreme Court allowed to the 14th Amendment required an end date, and that the Court anticipated that, 25 years from then, they’d expect to see all accomplished, and Affirmative Action ended.

We take the Law School at its word that it would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its race-conscious admissions program as soon as practicable. See Brief for Respondents Bollinger et al. 34; Bakke, supra, at 317ñ318 (opinion of Powell, J.) (presuming good faith of university officials in the absence of a showing to the contrary). It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. Since that time, the number of minority applicants with high grades and test scores has indeed increased. We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.

If the University of Michigan Law School told the Court that “would like nothing better than to find a race-neutral admissions formula and will terminate its race-conscious admissions program,” then even the Law School was admitting, in its defense of Affirmative Action, that that race-conscious admissions program had to end at some point. Perhaps Mr Parkhomenko disagrees with that?

Well, we’re 3½ years early in general terms, but the Court ended Affirmative Action in colleges, including private colleges, in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, in June of 2023. If 45 years of Affirmative Action — 25 from Regents of the University of California v Bakke to Grutter and twenty from Grutter to Students for Fair Admissions — didn’t ‘fix’ the problems, how much more time would?

To hear the principal dissent tell it, Grutter blessed such programs indefinitely, until “racial inequality will end.” Post, at 54 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.). But Grutter did no such thing. It emphasized—not once or twice, but at least six separate times—that race-based admissions programs “must have reasonable durational limits” and that their “deviation from the norm of equal treatment” must be “a temporary matter.” 539 U. S., at 342. The Court also disclaimed “[e]nshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences.” Ibid. Yet the justification for race-based admissions that the dissent latches on to is just that—unceasing.

The Federal Government is prohibited by the Constitution from treating people differently based on race. More, in one of his last acts, former President Biden — and I do so love typing former President Biden, or, to paraphrase the Munchkins, “Ding, dong, the dunce is gone!” — tried to declare the Equal Rights Amendment ratified, even though it wasn’t. But, to declare that means that Mr Biden was saying that any sex-based advantages being given in DEI were also gone.

The Federal government, and all of the government-based institutions need to follow the requirements of the 14th Amendment and treat people equally. Candidates for admissions and employment should be treated based upon their qualifications and abilities, not to which Accredited Victim Group™ they belonged.