Justice Clarence Thomas, for three decades the only African American member of the U.S. Sup. Ct. gained admission to Yale University in 1971 through its race-based policy. PHOTOS COURTESY OF YALE AND FACEBOOK

While the debate goes on perhaps indefinitely about whether the U.S. Supreme Court should have ruled against the use of affirmative action in college admission and what the impact will be, there are some facts that should be highlighted to show how this all came about.

First, there is the composition of the court.

Long known for implacable hostility to affirmative action, Justice Clarence Thomas, for three decades the only African American member, gained admission to Yale University in 1971 through its race-based policy. He probably saw snuffing it out as expiation for what he initially regarded as a blessing – which he had stated — and then as a sin. Ever since he was appointed to replace the late Thurgood Marshall, one of the most ardent supporters of affirmative action, Thomas has voted against every pro-affirmative action case for 30 years.

Thomas probably saw his nomination to the court by President George W. Bush also as an affirmative action hire because there was general consensus that another African American should be appointed to succeed Marshall. He did not shy away from playing the race card when his nomination was under attack.

He was confronted with a claim of sexually inappropriate behavior, especially by one his subordinates, Anita Hill, while he was chairman of the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission between 1982 and 1990. Thomas accused those who pressed that point of being guilty of “hi-tech” lynching.

Then there are three other Justices who, like Thomas, were among all six conservatives who scuttled affirmative action. President Donald J. Trump nominated all three.

Justice Neil M. Gorsuch owes his position on the court to the fact that then U.S. Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell refused to even hold hearings on President Barack Obama’s nominee, the current U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland for 11 months. McConnell hoped that a Republican would be elected President – which materialized with Trump’s victory in 2016.

Justice Brett M. Kavanaugh was confirmed also despite credible accusations of sexual misconduct while in college, including by Stanford professor Christine Blasey Ford.

Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s confirmation hearing and vote were rushed through the Senate. Trump nominated her in September 2020 and McConnell, ignoring his earlier claim that a nomination should not be made while a president’s term was ending, had Barrett confirmed in October 2020, when voting was already underway in some places.

And all three nominees were made at the behest of the arch-conservative Federalist Society, which is credited with putting forward all judicial nominations that Trump made, bypassing input from the legal profession as to their qualifications and suitability for the highest court in the country. It would seem that they were all nominated purely on ideological ground and put to litmus tests, including a pledge to reverse Roe v. Wade and eliminate the right to an abortion. Affirmative action was another target and many more similar reversals of settled law can be expected, dealing with schools and perhaps even the social safety net: whether Social Security and Medicare/Medicaid are on sound constitutional footing, as far as they are concerned.

Despite the questionable circumstances surrounding their appointments, this half of the Conservative Six, who are in their 50s, will be on the court for perhaps two generations. They do not have to vote by ideology. Instead of interpreting the Constitution’s original intent as they are doing, they can, instead, expand rights for all Americans, not contract them. After all, they occupy seats in the most powerful institution in the American power structure in which they will serve for life. They will not. Such are the consequences of voting, though it should be remembered that now President Joe Biden, as a Senator in a Senate with a Democratic majority, played a key role in advancing Thomas’ confirmation as chairman of the Judiciary Committee. As he prepared to launch his bid to become President, Biden called Hill to apologize for how she was treated by the committee 28 years earlier. Hill said the call did not satisfy her and she accused Biden of having “set the stage” for Kavanaugh’s 2018 confirmation. Biden seems to be atoning, selecting Kamala Harris as his running mate and now the first female vice president and the first African American woman to hold that office, along with nominating Ketanji Brown Jackson to the Supreme Court and 75 percent of his nominees to the federal judiciary are women, of whom 67 percent are not European Americans, compared to 23 percent by Trump. Some 92 percent of his nominees are European Americans, of whom 23 percent are women and two percent are non-European American women.

And then there is the background to the two affirmative action cases which gave the court the opportunity to act. Ironically, it was a so-called “minority” – an Asian student – who was used to front the challenge engineered by a European American, Edward Blum, for what would become the seventh and eighth affirmative action cases on which the court would rule, these involving Harvard University and the University of Carolina at Chapel Hill.

In searching for a front person, Blum and his Students for Fair Admissions found Michael Wang, in June 2013. Wang was having difficulties getting into an Ivy League school, blamed it on affirmative action and launched a campaign setting out his grievance. He filed a complaint with the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights, Mother Jones reported, in which he stated, “As recipients of federal funding, these private universities cannot discriminate on the basis of race, sex, gender, sexual orientation, age, disability, etc. Yet, they all resort to race-conscious admissions practices that violate existing federal laws and infringe upon my rights guaranteed by the Constitution.”

That made him an ideal plaintiff for Blum who, Mother Jones’ Evan Mandery said, “is the only person I’ve ever heard of whose Wikipedia title is ‘litigant.’” Blum told The Washington Post last year, as the two cases were being heard, “The founding principles were that your race and your ethnicity should not be used to help you or harm you in your life’s endeavors. I think the majority of Americans will think of this as a good outcome and then be a steppingstone to other good outcomes, not just in the law but in the way we see each other.”

Blum received support from groups whose identities he declined to name to The New York Times, other than saying there were some “high-net-worth individuals,” but the conservative groups the Donors Trust and Searle Freedom Trust disclosed their support. He took it all the way to the highest court, just as he did and just as successfully with Shelby County v. Holder which gave the court an excuse to scrap Section 5 of the Voting Rights Act, severely weakening the law designed 50 years ago to protect voting rights for African Americans.

So now there is no more “affirmative action” but preference through the so-called “legacy” admissions to Ivy League universities will continue. As Mother Jones noted, 17 percent of Harvard’s 2019 freshman class were students admitted on the basis of “legacy” – having an alumnus parent; 28 percent had one or more alumni relatives; and 43 percent were direct legacy students coming from families worth more than $500,000.

And, as James Bamford reported in his book “Spy Fail,” those with money, and the connections that it brings, have little difficulty getting their children into the top schools. They “donate” and “sponsor” scholarships and finance building expansions to get their children into the top schools.

And, after centuries of literacy discrimination, including harsh punishment of slaves for even learning to read and write, it is now unconstitutional for African Americas to be given a break in higher education – because six unelected men and women say so.