When a Supreme Court justice writes a majority or dissenting opinion, it should be based on hard facts.
For newly seated Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, that has not been the case.
Her latest dissent was so faulty, in fact, an attorney wrote a blistering op-ed in the Wall Street Journal to call her out.
Just Wrong
In the recent affirmative action case, Jackson claimed that affirmative action saves lives, citing a study on black doctors.
She wrote, “It saves lives. For marginalized communities in North Carolina, it is critically important that UNC and other area institutions produce highly educated professionals of color.
“Research shows that Black physicians are more likely to accurately assess Black patients’ pain tolerance and treat them accordingly (including, for example, prescribing them appropriate amounts of pain medication).
“For high-risk Black newborns, having a Black physician more than doubles the likelihood that the baby will live, and not die.”
The problem, as is evident even if you do a quick crunching of the numbers, is that she is just blatantly wrong.
Attorney Ted Frank pointed that out, writing, “A moment’s thought should be enough to realize that this claim is wildly implausible. Imagine if 40% of black newborns died—thousands of dead infants every week.
“But even so, that’s a 60% survival rate, which is mathematically impossible to double. And the actual survival rate is over 99%.”
Frank continued, “The study makes no such claims. It examines mortality rates in Florida newborns between 1992 and 2015 and shows a 0.13% to 0.2% improvement in survival rates for black newborns with black pediatricians (though no statistically significant improvement for black obstetricians).”
He concluded, “So we have a Supreme Court justice parroting a mathematically absurd claim coming from an interested party’s mischaracterization of a flawed study.
“Her opinion then urges ‘all of us’ to ‘do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together.’
“Instead we should watch where we’re going.”
It is dissents like this that inspired Justice Gorsuch to call out the liberal members of the bench for twisting facts and inventing narratives to support their dissenting opinions.
Sadly, most media outlets, Democrats, and liberals could care less about facts, and they will back her dissent to counter the opinion issued by the court in this case.
Source: Wall Street Journal
