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I applaud the U.S. Supreme Court for upholding the 14th Amendment. The recent Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College was a huge victory for civil liberties and equality in the United States.
I remember being a high school student in the mid 1990s when I first heard the phrase “affirmative action.” Being inquisitive I asked my home room teacher what it meant. I believe my teacher, not wanting to force an opinion on me, but rather wanting me to form my own, briefly described the policy and led me to research the Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case.
This research would shape my opinion of the policy for the rest of my life. I felt then as I do now that not admitting more qualified students to accept less qualified students based on their race or skin color was wrong, and counter to our principles that all people should be treated equally. As the great civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. said, by the content of their character not the color of their skin.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. I couldn’t agree more.
Rep. Billy Bob Faulkingham, Maine House Republican Leader
Winter Harbor