The Obamacare SCOTUScare and same-sex marriage ruling were not the only judicial atrocities issued this week. It was trifecta week The far less covered matter is ably explained and critiqued by John Fund in this National Review article
The Supreme Court’s Disparate-Impact Decision Is a Disaster
In Texas Department of Housing v. The Inclusive Communities Project, the anti-segregation group ICP sued the Texas housing authority. ICP claimed that federal tax credits to developers who build low-income housing projects were disproportionately allocating too many of the tax credits to properties in minority areas and too few in suburban areas.
But the housing authority responded that the purpose of federal tax credits is to help underprivileged residents of rundown areas in an effort to improve their blighted status. Such credits have a far less positive effect in more well-off neighborhoods. No evidence was presented that Texas officials were trying to discriminate.
In other words, as a broad-based federal matter, the complainant wanted to ensure that low rent housing is built-in or on the edge of, name your local middle and upper-middle class McMansion enclave. That subsidized development in such areas increases costs for taxpayers and drives down property values in those areas while neglecting renewal in poorer neighborhoods is of no concern to complainants. That those costs are passed on to tax payers either immediately in the form of increased land acquisition costs, or by the reduction in a fruitful tax base or in the form of reduced property tax income due to reduced property values is of no concern to complainants either, nor as it turned out, to the majority of the SCOTUS.
The court majority chose to adopt a nebulous theory of “disparate impact” in justification for their decision. The implications of that goes far beyond subsidized housing and urban renewal and into all manner of possible complaints by protected classes. As Fund points out this case adds to and reinforces such confounded practices as current . . .
Obama-administration agency action making it extremely difficult for employers to screen out job applicants based on their criminal record. In addition, in those increasingly rare situations in which the employer does decline to hire an applicant because of his criminal record, the latest guidance from the Obama Equal Employment Opportunity Commission to employers in this regard all but forces the employer to inform the job applicant that this has happened. This dramatically increases the chances employers will be hit with a discrimination lawsuit.
Martin Luther King Jr. famously looked forward to the day when his children would be judged not by the color of their skin but by the content of their character. As Gail Heriot of the U.S. Civil Rights Commission points out, “The content of one’s character, at least as revealed by one’s criminal record, cannot be taken into account without risking litigation.” This turns the original goals of King’s movement and the Civil Rights Act of 1964 upside down.
Read Fund’s analysis here.
The most noteworthy issue of the ‘disparity of outcome’ judgement is that the Court ruled that ‘no intent to discriminate’ was not a consideration in the case. It was only the outcome that was judged ! And yet, Roberts stated that the Court judged the ACA ruling on their interpretation of the ‘intent’ of Congress ! So…how does the “Court” get to have it both ways…..basing one ruling on intent and not the other……