The US supreme court rulings which struck down the White House’s student debt relief plan, affirmative action in college admission and a Colorado law that protected LGBTQ+ rights portend “a national movement to attack hard-won and hard-fought freedoms”, Vice-President Kamala Harris has said.
In an interview with National Public Radio’s Michel Martin, Harris declared that “this is a serious moment” for people “who believe in the promise of our country [but] understand we have some work yet to do to fully achieve that promise”.
“Fundamental issues are at stake,” Harris said, as she called on Americans to vote – including in the 2024 presidential race – for political candidates who would work to shield rights rather than rescind them.
Harris’s remarks came after the supreme court’s conservative supermajority on Thursday ended race-conscious admissions at universities across the US, defying decades of legal precedent to the detriment of greater student diversity on the nation’s campuses. The court on Friday also ruled that both a Colorado law which compelled businesses and organizations to treat same-sex couples equally as well as Joe Biden’s landmark student debt forgiveness plan were both unconstitutional.
The decision on the Colorado law came on the last day of Pride month, which annually celebrates LGBTQ+ achievements and commemorates the 1969 Stonewall uprising in New York, a key moment in the community’s civil rights movement.
That decision and the two others all were handed down a year after the supreme court eliminated the federal abortion rights which had been established by the 1973 Roe v Wade ruling.
Harris said she and other members of Joe Biden’s administration have a role in mounting a counteraction to the supreme court rulings, which she characterized as “moments of great consequence and … crises”.
In the early stages of his 2024 re-election run, as some Republicans call for national abortion restrictions, the president has pledged to work to enshrine abortion rights, among other reproductive health care protections.
Biden also outlined a new student debt relief plan within hours of the supreme court’s striking down his previous one.
But Harris told Martin that voters can also help plot the way forward. Besides voting all the way down ballots during local, state and national elections, they can organize against the political forces which planted the seeds for this week’s volley of supreme court rulings, the vice-president said while appearing at the Essence Festival of Culture in New Orleans on Thursday and Friday, according to Nola.com.
The supreme court’s shift to the hard right became possible after the Donald Trump presidency succeeded in appointing the ultra-conservative justices Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Harris predicted the week’s supreme court decisions would “have generational impact” and described herself “deeply concerned about the implications of this … to the future of our country”, Nola.com added.
In her remarks at the Essence Festival, one of the US’s top annual showcases for Black culture, Harris said: “I feel very strongly that the promise of America will only be achieved if we’re willing to fight for it.”
Source: US Politics - theguardian.com
