On Tuesday, President Donald Trump issued an executive order revoking President Lyndon Baines Johnson’s Executive Order 11246 from 1965 and other similar orders from over the decades since. Trump’s new order is grounded in the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the 14th Amendment. The executive order can be read here.
The order rejects the “counting by race” approach taken by Johnson and later by the Supreme Court in the 1978 Bakke decision, which was only repudiated by the Supreme Court in recent years. This move is not a “liberal” or “conservative” action, but rather the Constitution speaking, as amended to eradicate the stain of slavery after the Civil War.
The path to the original public meaning of the 14th Amendment has taken from 1868 to 2023 to complete: citizens may not have penalties inflicted upon them or awards given them based on their immutable characteristics or religious beliefs. No institution, from Harvard College to the local convenience store, may lawfully violate this first principle of the 14th Amendment.
The Supreme Court has flailed for almost 50 years to finally settle on what Abraham Lincoln, Dr. Martin Luther King, and Chief Justice John Roberts have stated in the 2007 case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”
The Supreme Court, built in part by President Trump, has already affirmed the original meaning of the 14th Amendment and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 in recent years. If challenged, the executive order will be found to be on the firmest of constitutional grounds. Bravo to the many hands that crafted it, and especially to President Trump, who signed it.
