The supreme court is picking and choosing how they want to follow their textualism/originalism (as are the defenders of this opinion). There's no originalist argument for striking down AA. That makes them political activists (my original claim).
But if you want my personal opinion on AA, it's that it's a net good even though it's not perfect. We do need to deal with the fact that PoC have been discriminated against and that discrimination shows itself in generational poverty.
There is a mountain [1] of evidence that poverty has detrimental effects on education. We've spent decades forcing black people into poverty through red lining, racist loans, and even firebombing them when they became too prosperous [2]. So, of course, the offspring of these actions are going to have a much harder time succeeding.
Black americans have had higher rights of poverty for as long as we've tracked that statistic [3].
So should we "discriminate" against white people by making it easier for PoC to get admitted? Absolutely. The racism of the past has ripple effects that still haven't been fully addressed.
Now, to be frank, I'd rather that discrimination be based on income. Which would STILL result in black people getting a leg up (see poverty stats). But, you can't just say "well let's just be color blind now" and think everything is hunky dory.
I also support government reparations. Which could also be argued to be "discriminatory" since they'd primarily go to black people. Well, guess what, we discriminated based on race. The only way to heal that is helping the race that was discriminated against.
[1] https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C38&q=pov...
[2] https://www.neh.gov/article/1921-tulsa-massacre
[3] https://www.census.gov/library/stories/2020/09/poverty-rates...
okay, what constitutional basis does the civil rights act have to protect you from discrimination by a restaurant that should not apply to a university?
Did you know that private schools can discriminate based on race today (In fact, this SC opinion reaffirms that)? The civil rights act explicitly only applied to public schools, not private ones.
What prevents the civil rights act from applying to a (private) university? The text of the bill. Could it? Yeah, if we amended it. Should it? Yup, we should push for that.
What gives the civil rights act its power? 9th amendment, 14th amendment, and article 1 of the constitution.