Higher Education Wasn’t the Only Target of the Anti-Affirmative Action Movement

The moment the U.S. Supreme Court wiped out affirmative action in higher education in June, civil rights advocates warned that the effects could stretch beyond colleges and universities.

Just months later, we can see that they were right.

A venture capital firm run by women of color is in a legal fight to protect the firm’s contest that grants $20,000 to Black women business owners. And a maternal health program based in San Francisco that gives pregnant Black and Pacific Islander residents $1,000 monthly stipends is being sued.

For more than half a century, affirmative action helped to remedy the country’s long and ongoing history of discrimination against marginalized groups, and in particular Black Americans. But it appears that the landmark ruling has become an opening for conservative actors to dismantle other efforts to level the playing field, and the stakes remain high.

Capital B spoke with several experts about the implications of the high court’s decision to turn back the clock for everything from voting rights to congressional funding opportunities for Black farmers to diversity efforts within police departments.

A vital health program becomes a target

When the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision came down, it was clear that it could affect the diversity of the health care workforce pipeline.

Immediately, health care experts raised concerns about what could happen at medical schools across the country — how shrinking the diversity of the student body could lead to a decrease in the number of Black doctors. Currently, just under 6% of physicians are Black, a disproportionately low percentage.

Read more: What’s Behind Black Women’s High Risk For Strokes

Among advocates, the argument for a diverse health care workforce is that it will reduce the number of health disparities that end Black lives early. There’s a growing body of research that shows that having a doctor who looks like their patients can positively influence outcomes.

Notably, some of the conservative pushback against affirmative action has broadened beyond medical school admissions and health care training to city programs designed to address persistent racial disparities in health outcomes.

San Francisco’s Abundant Birth Project is facing a lawsuit intended to shut it down. It’s given 150 pregnant Black and Pacific Islander residents $1,000 monthly stipends to support families who need help with things such as gas and food.

The pioneering program is intended to combat grim realities: Black folks are three to four times more likely than white folks to die from childbirth-related causes, and per infant mortality data, Black babies are two times more likely than white babies to die. In short, the program offers services to the most vulnerable. But the lawsuit claims that it’s racially discriminatory.

It’s unclear how much this argument will hold up in court, even with the June decision. The stakes are different when we’re talking about college admissions versus death or severe health complications.

Voting rights and the assault on democracy

Since the 2020 census, Louisiana, like a number of other states, has been involved in a legal dispute over a district map that civil rights groups say violates Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965 because it dilutes the political power of Black voters. Louisiana is 33% Black, but Black voters can pick their candidate of choice in just one of the state’s six congressional districts.

In court documents filed only a week after the Supreme Court overturned affirmative action, Louisiana Republicans signaled their intent to use the decision to argue that considering race in map drawing ought to be illegal — a claim that could be embraced elsewhere in the U.S. and undermine the primary legislative achievement of the Civil Rights Movement.

Read more: A New Report Card Evaluates Voting Maps in Every State. How Did Your State Do?

Attorneys for the Republicans suggested that Section 2, which allows litigation in order to ensure equality at the ballot box, “is no longer necessary” because racial discrimination in voting isn’t the sort of menace today that it was when the Voting Rights Act was signed into law.

This was an extension of some of the logic advanced in the affirmative action case. The court “made clear that as statutes requiring race-based classification achieve their intended ends, they will necessarily become obsolete,” the attorneys insisted.

Such scheming exemplifies why advocates are concerned about the state of voting rights, even with victories such as the Supreme Court’s June decision that required Alabama to add a second majority-Black congressional district.

As Adrianne Shropshire, the executive director of BlackPAC, an independent organization focusing on political engagement, told Capital B earlier this year, “The assault on democracy is in full swing.”

Is environmental justice an outlier?

Advocates cautiously rejoiced when the Biden administration announced that climate and environmental issues would be a top policy priority. They had seen it before: Since the Carter administration in the 1970s and ’80s, every Democratic president has instituted environmental policies only for a conservative leader to come along and roll them back or ignore them.

Read more: Moving South, Black Americans Are Weathering Climate Change

Still, when the current administration announced its Justice40 program — a plan to ensure that at least 40% of federal investments related to climate adaptation and infrastructure would be delivered to “disadvantaged” communities — the support was loud and optimistic.

Then, however, the administration announced that it wouldn’t include race in its metrics for determining what a “disadvantaged” community is, despite the fact that race is the most reliable determinant of environmental and climate injustices. Seemingly every environmental justice group in the country released a statement against this decision, decrying it as another plain example of environmental racism.

Yet after this year’s affirmative action decision, it appears as if the administration knew precisely what it was doing. Because climate and environmental policies don’t mention race, they’ve avoided legal challenges from a Supreme Court that leans conservative.

But this doesn’t mean that everything’s fine. Since last year, the court has issued rulings that have defanged the Clean Water and Clean Air acts. And while the administration’s “colorblind” approach has, so far, staved off the total disruption of its climate goals, this strategy will make climate change adaptation less effective, more costly, and slower.

Black farmers remain on high alert

Black farmers fear that the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision might further diminish opportunities for them to receive congressional funding that could help them. They’ve faced discrimination at the hands of the U.S. Department of Agriculture before.

Consider the controversy over the American Rescue Plan Act of 2021. It created a $4 billion debt relief program for socially disadvantaged farmers and ranchers, including Black, Native American, Latino, and Asian communities.

Read more: Resources for Black Families Fighting for Control of Their Land

But the program was quickly shut down. A judge issued a restraining order in response to a class-action lawsuit brought by white farmers who alleged that the program discriminated against them. The Inflation Reduction Act replaced the program with assistance for a broader group of “distressed borrowers.”

John Boyd, the founder of the National Black Farmers Association, told Capital B that this change “set a trap for affirmative action,” and will give conservative groups ammunition to sue or stop race-based programs — maneuvering that will disproportionately disadvantage Black farmers, who feel ignored by the Biden administration. Farmers are facing foreclosure and economic hardship because they can’t get access to government resources.

“While the grass is growing, the cows are starving,” Boyd said. “I’m disappointed in the president [and] in this administration for not keeping the issue where it should be, which is front and center. There’s no dialogue from the White House, and we haven’t received a ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answer [about whether we’ll be able] to meet.”

Harvey Reed, an agricultural consultant and the founder of the Louisiana Association of Cooperatives, said that he isn’t optimistic that the USDA or its agencies will do anything to move the needle. With the gutting of affirmative action, addressing historical injustices within the agency might not be a priority for the administration.

“For 90 years, the USDA’s Farm Service Agency has made promise after promise that it will compensate Black farmers, but as of yet, nothing has happened,” Reed said. “The secretary of agriculture has had 12 years or more — eight under Obama and 11 under Biden — and has not done anything.”

Tammy Gray-Steele, the CEO and founder of the National Women in Agriculture Association, told Capital B that she fears that the affirmative action decision will only intensify the challenges plaguing Black women, whose concerns the USDA and the White House overlooked until recently.

“I’m just hoping that they get new, younger people at the table who are honest and have some integrity really on behalf of Black farmers,” she said.

Keeping an eye on police department diversity

The Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision may have paved the way for government-funded agencies, including police departments, to ignore applications from racial and ethnic minorities and women.

The criminal justice system disproportionately affects Black and brown communities. And yet, those who investigate criminal activity are largely white. This disparity can lead to cultural misunderstandings, which can, in turn, derail investigations.

Read more: What Police Say Vs. What They Do on Tape

“Without that [affirmative action], we’re hopeful that people will do the right thing, but that [relying on agencies to voluntarily hire people of color] hasn’t always been to the advantage of minority individuals,” Rodney Bryant, the national president of the National Organization for Black Law Enforcement Executives, or NOBLE, told Capital B.

When President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925 in 1961, the order opened up job opportunities for people of color.

Affirmative action was later expanded to include anti-sex discrimination policies.

“The greatest beneficiary of affirmative action has been women. In law enforcement, they’re the minority. This is one of the areas we’ve been working very aggressively to [improve],” Bryant explained, referring to the 30×30 Initiative, a coalition of law enforcement professionals attempting to have women make up 30% of law enforcement staff by 2030.

He noted that, even with these kinds of initiatives, there’s no guarantee that agencies will proactively diversify their staff. And that’s concerning.

“We know that when you have a diverse agency, you function better in law enforcement or in corporate America. You function better because those people bring a level of value, which is a benefit to your agency or to the community you serve,” Bryant said.

The fallout for Black businesses

The Fearless Fund — whose founders say that it’s the first of its kind “built by women of color, for women of color” — has been in a legal battle since August.

A group run by Edward Blum, the conservative activist who’s been crusading against affirmative action for decades, filed a lawsuit against the venture capitalist firm. Blum, who brought the case that ended colleges’ use of race-conscious admissions policies, targeted the Fearless Fund’s contest that awards $20,000 to Black women business owners.

Read more: Texas’ College DEI Ban Is the Latest to ‘Turn Back the Clock on Racial Equality

Not only do companies led by Black women usually receive less than 1% of all venture capital funding, but in 2022, venture capital for Black entrepreneurs plunged by 45%, according to data. Yet conservative actors are seeking to quash programs that confront racial inequality.

The Fearless Fund’s contest, in Blum’s mind, violates the Civil Rights Act of 1866, which was designed during the Reconstruction era to establish equal citizenship rights for newly emancipated people of African descent.

A federal appeals court in October temporarily paused the Atlanta-based firm’s program, saying that it’s “racially discriminatory.” The civil rights attorney Benjamin Crump has since filed an appeal on behalf of the firm. Oral arguments are scheduled to begin in January.

Blum’s legal machinations shine a light on a growing conservative pattern of weaponizing social justice-oriented tools against efforts to nourish racial equality in the private sector, The Washington Post reported in November.

Arian Simone, one of the Fearless Fund’s founding partners, has made plain the importance of this case.

“In the event we were to lose, what is at stake is anything that is race-based,” she said in a recent video. “If we win, we win — we are winning for everybody. But if we lose, then everybody’s affected by our loss. Everybody loses.”

Capital B staff writers Margo Snipe, Adam Mahoney, Aallyah Wright, and Christina Carrega contributed to this report.

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