Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson said that she was “flattered” by Justice Clarence Thomas‘ comments on her dissent of the High Court’s 2023 affirmative action ruling.
In an interview with CNN published on Friday before airing at 10 p.m. ET, Jackson was asked if the court’s decision to end affirmative action at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina may be negatively impacting Black students. She responded by saying that she had not closely looked into the issue, CNN said, while also noting that she was “flattered” by Thomas’ written disagreement with her dissent.
“In one way, I think I was flattered,” Jackson said to CNN’s Abby Phillip, “because it meant I must have been making points that were worth responding to.” Jackson recused herself from weighing in on the Harvard case as she is an alumna of the university.
Affirmative action refers to policies that attempt to assist minority groups and the underrepresented by considering factors of gender and race in employment and education.
Newsweek has reached out to the Supreme Court via email on Friday evening for comment from Thomas.
In her June 2023 dissent regarding the affirmative action ruling, Jackson said in part, “Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens.” She continued: “Our country has never been colorblind. Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizenry.”
In his concurring response to the court’s ruling, Thomas called out Jackson: “Rather than focusing on individuals as individuals, her dissent focuses on the historical subjugation of black Americans, invoking statistical racial gaps to argue in favor of defining and categorizing individuals by their race.”
Thomas added: “As [Jackson] sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today.”
Legal analyst and Palm Beach County State Attorney Dave Aronberg told Newsweek via X, formerly Twitter, on Friday, “I know Justice Jackson from high school debate, college and law school. If she says she was ‘flattered’ by Justice Thomas’ dissent, then she means it. Her character and ideology are quite dissimilar to Justice Thomas’, so she understandably wears his repudiation of her as a badge of honor.” Aronberg also noted to Newsweek that he went to college and law school with Jackson and that they both partook in the same summer debate program in high school.
Jackson also spoke about her memoir, Lovely One, her career and her family in the interview with CNN.