7 - Equal Protection

Summary

This chapter explores symmetry’s implications for equal protection jurisprudence. A stark political divide has emerged between two understandings of legal equality, particularly with respect to race: conservatives generally favor an “anti-classification” approach focused on ensuring government neutrality, while progressives typically favor an “anti-subordination” approach that allows affirmative governmental action to redress historical group disadvantages. Although the Supreme Court has increasingly aligned its jurisprudence with the anti-classification perspective, symmetry should encourage an approach that gives something to both sides. The Court might accomplish this goal in at least three ways: by returning to the focus on diversity reflected in its earlier decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke while giving this framework greater “bite”; by allowing majority groups to disadvantage themselves, so long as they are genuinely dominant at the relevant level of government; and by sometimes allowing selection of government criteria with a view to their demographic effects, so long as these criteria are themselves facially neutral.