Attorney General Eric Holder has praised "courageous" Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor for her dissent against allowing Michigan to end affirmative action at public universities.
The Wall Street Journal reported that during a speech to Justice Department employees Wednesday Holder called Sotomayor’s dissenting remarks "courageous and very personal.''
Sotomayor joined with another liberal on the bench, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, against upholding Michigan’s voter-approved law banning the use of racial preferences in school admissions. But they were outvoted 6-2.
In her
58-page dissent, the Supreme Court’s first Hispanic justice declared that the court was ignoring a U.S. history of discrimination and the needs of people on the margins of society, Reuters reported.
She said in her 12-minute remarks that judges should not "wish away, rather than confront, the racial inequality that exists in our society. The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to speak openly and candidly on the subject of race.''
Holder repeated that statement in his speech and then said, "This great country still has a ways to go before our founding promise of equal justice and equal opportunity is fully realized.
"And progress will require not just open and honest dialogue, but a willingness to confront these difficult issues through principled action—to address and remediate the lingering impacts of racial discrimination.''
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