Birmingham Mayor Randall Woodfin took to Twitter on Thursday and Friday to voice his opinion on two major U.S. Supreme Court decisions last week that ruled against affirmative action programs in university admissions and Joe Biden's student loan cancellation plan.
On Thursday morning, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in a landmark case that affirmative action in college admissions violated the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause. Affirmative action policies and programs give preference to particular minority groups, such as black people and Latin Americans, over other ethnic groups, such as white and Asian people.
"Today's Supreme Court ruling striking down affirmative action in college admissions is a short-sighted, dangerous precedent," Woodfin wrote in a Facebook post following the ruling. "Affirmative action was never designed to be a cheat code for Black students to skip the line. It was meant to level the playing field within a system that for generations said we didn't belong."
Woodfin said that the Court's decision proves that racism still exists in America and that ending affirmative action "is not a symbol of progress."
The next day, the Court shot down Biden's over $400 billion student loan forgiveness plan that would have forgiven up to $20,000 in federal student loan debt to Pell Grant recipients and up to $10,000 to all other federal student loan borrowers with individual incomes less than $125,000 or household incomes less than $250,000.
Now, Biden claims he'll use the Higher Education Act (HEA) to relieve student loans, a change of direction from his original plan.
Woodfin posted on Facebook again, thanking Biden for pursuing the HEA route.
"Extremely disheartening to see SCOTUS strike down student debt relief today," Woodfin wrote. "Education should be a ladder up, not a financial hole we're forced to dig out of."
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