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Is Integration A Discriminatory Purpose?, Michelle Adams
Is Integration A Discriminatory Purpose?, Michelle Adams
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Is integration a form of discrimination? Remarkably, recent Supreme Court doctrine suggests that the answer to this question may well be yes. In Ricci v. DeStefano, the Court characterizes - for the very first time - government action taken to avoid disparate-impact liability and to integrate the workplace as "race-based," and then invalidates that action under a heightened level of judicial review. Consequently, Ricci suggests that the Court is open to the "equivalence doctrine," which posits that laws intended to racially integrate are morally and constitutionally equivalent to laws intended to racially separate. Under the equivalence doctrine, integration is simply …