One of the most consequential climate cases of the Supreme Court's term isn't about greenhouse gas emissions — it's about college admissions. But it could allow the court to further hobble the Biden administration's efforts to address climate change. On Monday, the justices will consider whether Harvard and other universities can account for race when deciding which students to accept. And here's the climate angle: President Joe Biden has committed to address long-standing inequities that have left Black and brown communities more exposed to the effects of rising global temperatures. But if the Supreme Court rules against Harvard, federal agencies might have to do their climate justice work without acknowledging racial disparities, making it harder to provide targeted relief. That would be a big problem, said Emily Hammond, a professor and vice provost at George Washington University Law School, in a story I wrote today for POLITICO's E&E News . "Our current system is not race-neutral, and agencies working on environmental justice, they're faced with the need to correct environmental injustice in a system that perpetuates that injustice," Hammond said. Opponents of race-conscious college admissions argue that the policies — designed to draw in a diverse set of students — are "overemphasizing race" to the point that schools are illegally excluding Asian and white applicants. Federal courts already admonished the Biden team for focusing on race in a debt relief program for Black farmers. And the White House Council on Environmental Quality this year avoided using race as a criterion in its new screening tool to identify disadvantaged communities most in need of federal investment. "Regardless of how the Supreme Court rules, the administration is keen to set up a framework that will survive judicial scrutiny," said Tanya Nesbitt, a partner in the environmental practice group at the law firm Thompson Hine. That caution could come at a cost, said Hammond. "Environmental injustice is at its core racial injustice, and failing to meet that very difficult aspect of our society head-on means that if you care about efficient government, we're not doing it efficiently," Hammond said. "If you care about restorative efforts, we're not focusing them where they need to be focused."
| 
No comments:
Post a Comment