One Last Word On Ricci

Commenter Deva gets at a lot of my concerns:

To me, this is the heart of the issue. The city threw out the test not because they thought it was biased, but because they were afraid to get sued. That's not only their practical justification, but their legal justification. That's weak. For me, the case doesn't have any kind of moral heft unless you establish whether the test is actually biased or not. The state didn't even bother to try to find out. They just screamed OH NOES and invalidated the results. In what way is that useful to anyone? I believe the SCOTUS issued new rules today about when it's approproate to take action because of a fear of lawsuits and when it's not. Perhaps that will be useful.

I know the case is tied in to much larger issues, but the more I read about it, the narrow and esoteric the thing seems. I can't get worked up about it one way or the other because all the decisions have been so narrow and the deep moral/philosophical questions seem quite far from what folks are mulling over on the bench. That said, Ginsburg's dissent is a tour-du-force. Taking it as a policy statement, I could not agree more.

She should get her of fucking blog, and stop outshining me in the comment section. Seriously, though "the moral heft" point mirrors a lot of my own thinking.