Supreme Court affirmative action ban should be enforced, GOP senators warn Cardona

A group of GOP senators is accusing the Education Department of bristling at the Supreme Court’s ban on race-conscious admissions and demanding the agency explain how it plans to enforce the controversial new standard.

In a caustic letter sent to Education Secretary Miguel Cardona earlier this week, 10 Republicans, led by Iowa Sen. Joni Ernst, pressured the department to “embrace the full essence of the Court’s holdings.” The letter was sent Tuesday and made public Thursday.

“The American people deserve no less than an Executive Branch committed to enforcing the law equally to all people without concern for their race,” they wrote. “We are concerned enforcement of the new legal standard will be insufficient.”

The Republicans – who include Sens. Marsha Blackburn, R-Tenn., and JD Vance, R-Ohio, among others – pressured the department to produce a plan of action for how it will conduct oversight to ensure colleges stay up to snuff with the court’s reversal of decades of precedent.

Supreme Court axed affirmative action. Biden administration offers colleges tips on diversity

They also requested to know how many department employees or contractors could be responsible for enforcing the legal standard imposed by the court. The letter gives the department until the end of the month to provide the information to the chairs and ranking members of education-related committees in both chambers of Congress.

After the Supreme Court struck down the practice of race-conscious admissions in a long-awaited decision in June, President Joe Biden lambasted the conservative justices.

“This is not a normal court,” he said during a press conference he called just after the ruling. The president said he “strongly, strongly” disagreed with the decision and called on colleges and universities to develop a "new standard" that would consider student’s life adversities in admissions, including any racial discrimination they may have faced.

Investigation into Harvard's admissions This time looking at legacy preferences

Colleges cite caveat to consider race

A number of selective schools have already worked such questions into essay prompts. Sarah Lawrence College, a private liberal arts college in New York state, for example, announced in July it would include a new question for applicants that explicitly asks how applicants’ lives have been “affected by the Court’s decision.” The prompt cites a caveat in Chief Justice John Roberts’ majority opinion, which says “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected the applicant's life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”

The Education Department issued a “dear colleague” letter last month urging colleges to find workarounds to the decision to retain students of color. It also recommended that universities reexamine practices that have historically benefitted wealthier and whiter students, such as preferences for legacy students or children of donors. Prior to the ruling, considering race as part of a holistic admissions process was most prevalent at the nation's most selective schools.

An Education Department spokesperson told USA TODAY the department has received the letter and is reviewing it.

Zachary Schermele is a breaking news and education reporter for USA Today. You can reach him by email at zschermele@usatoday.com. Follow him on X at @ZachSchermele.

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: GOP senators want affirmative action ban enforcement from Cardona