Again, this is different than a you know,
straightforward constitutional challenge to the statute.
Texas is merely making a claim about the correct way to read the statute.
Now the thing is, as we said earlier.
Texas's interpretation has been rejected by just about every court.
Every lower court to ever consider the issue throughout the,
you know, 45 plus years that the Fair Housing Act has been in existence.
So why is Texas raising this argument if it's a certain loser?
Well it isn't a certain loser, and
the reason why tells us a lot about the current Supreme Court.
Texas is bringing this argument,
because in a series of decisions over the last decade or so.
The Supreme Court has made perfectly clear that it
is not a big fan of letting the government even take notice of
race in order to combat racial inequalities that exist in society today.
In 2003, the Court rules in a case called Gratz v Bollinger,
that public universities, in that case it was the University of Michigan.
That public universities cannot use race-based affirmative action
programs that assign a fixed number of extra points to people for
having certain minority backgrounds.
Though in another case, it did uphold an affirmative action program that used race
in a more inchoate, holistic manner.
In the 2007 case, Parents Involved versus Seattle School District number 1,
the Court struck down a voluntary desegregation/integration effort used by
two school districts.
In which students where individually assigned to schools based on
race in order to achieve diversity and avoid racial isolation.
In 2006, the Court limited the scope of a provision of
the Voting Rights Act that had been used to ensure opportunities for
racial minorities to elect candidates of their choice.
And they did the same thing or a similar thing in another 2008 case.
In 2009 the Court limited the ability of towns and
cities to engage in race-conscious measures to avoid or
remedy unintentional racial inequalities in public employment.
And in 2013, in the case you may have heard of called Shelby County v Holder.
The Court struck down the preclearance provision of the Voting Rights Act.
Which had required states with long histories of racial discrimination to
obtain preclearance from the Department of Justice or from
a US District Court before implementing any changes to their voting laws.
In order to make sure that those changes wouldn't have the intent or
effect of making it more difficult for minorities to exercise the right to vote.
Now in all of these cases, the government used race in order to, the government took
notice of race in order to remedy past racial discrimination.
And and, and achieve a greater level of diversity.
So clearly the Roberts court is not a big fan of laws that let
the government take notice of race.