Keeping On: About Last Week’s SCOTUS Rulings
For all those who have been working toward progress — undoing historic and systemic harms due to current and past policies so as to live in a world that is fair, safe, and supportive of everyone — last week’s flurry of United States Supreme Court decisions have been dismaying.
Taken together, SCOTUS ruled on a set of key cases that undermined what it means for people to feel and be free. Ironically and disappointingly, their decisions came soon after the nation recognized Juneteenth — a holiday created to commemorate the end of U.S. slavery, essentially the country’s second Independence Day. Then, of course, there is the July 4th we all know — the liberation of this country from British colonial rule. Yet, last week’s decisions undermined the actual and symbolic senses of liberty.
At the center of the alarm is SFFA v. Harvard/UNC. The court’s ruling on a decision to end race-based policies in higher education effectively spelled the end of policies that helped schools in the U.S. attempt to repair decades of unequal admissions policies and practices. Moreover, in Department of Education v. Brown, by overturning the Biden Administration’s efforts to forgive $400 billion student debt–actions to relieve the financial burdens of people–the court imposed a double standard that companies should have more protections to be freed from debt than human beings. By disallowing the Executive Branch to forgive student debt, using a law already used to forgive corporate debt, the court dehumanized people’s ability to live freely–to have children, to take more rewarding jobs, to spend time caring for families, and to be involved in their communities. A life of debt is not free. And, by ruling in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis that a private business can discriminate against people’s orientation, the court opened the door to new Jim Crow standards that are antithetical to a free, open, and fair society.
The back-to-back rulings are dehumanizing: These decisions perpetuate harm that racism has had on certain populations, ignore the plight of people in favor of corporate well-being and financial health, and enable discrimination and segregation in society. These rulings are likely to help usher in new and wider forms of a society of haves and have-nots, which leads to social unrest, economic destabilization, and undermining of democracy.
At the Center for Cultural Innovation (CCI), we have been working to build the kinds of just and freeing alternative systems that everyone needs and deserves. The work that CCI has been focused on is meant to ensure that people, and their communities, have more choices — economically, socially, legally, academically, and for their health. We support efforts wherein communities under threat of displacement have economic ownership and, thus, financial self-determination. We advocate on issues to decouple work from worth so that everyone can move through life feeling and being supported. We do not do this work alone. Knowing how gutting these decisions are to the people and the communities we serve, we are now focused on doing what we can to support their ability to continue their work, which can be both joyous for centering on world-building, but also draining because of the ever-increasing hurdles they and their communities face.
We cannot let these decisions be a distraction. We believe that investing in building new social, economic, and cultural structures — new intermediaries, new systems, and new rules — must continue to happen now so that the future is not crushed by the whim of inherited and problematic institutions that do not represent the greater diversity of people’s identities and experiences.
Like this nation’s history, as deeply flawed as it remains, and those fighting for progress and alternatives to systemic harms, we go on to evolve into a country that loves and supports everyone.
