A Major Constitutional Problem for Reparations
10th December 2024
Liberal governments like those running California, New York, and Detroit are rolling out reparations proposals that treat Americans differently depending on their skin color. That’s a constitutional problem.
The 14th Amendment says that governments cannot deny “any person” the “equal protection of the laws.” This means, as the Supreme Court says, that the law applies to everyone “without any differences of race, of color, or of nationality—it is universal in its application.”
The problem that equal protection poses for reparations is obvious: Reparations discriminate by race and make one group more “equal” than others.
Which has been the elephant swept under the rug since the advent of ‘civil rights’ laws in the mid-1960s. Until that time, Americans had a Right of Free Association, by which one could associate with other people or not according to one’s preference. The various cake and photogapher suits by the Alphabet Mafia who don’t choose to work for pervert celebrations are merely the reductio ad absurdam of that trend.