258
Stevens, J., dissenting
affirmative. The majority today overrules Metro Broadcasting only insofar as it is "inconsistent with [the] holding" that strict scrutiny applies to "benign" racial classifications promulgated by the Federal Government. Ante, at 227. The proposition that fostering diversity may provide a sufficient interest to justify such a program is not inconsistent with the Court's holding today—indeed, the question is not remotely presented in this case—and I do not take the Court's opinion to diminish that aspect of our decision in Metro Broadcasting.
The Court's suggestion that it may be necessary in the future to overrule Fullilove in order to restore the fabric of the law, ante, at 235, is even more disingenuous than its treatment of Metro Broadcasting. For the Court endorses the "strict scrutiny" standard that Justice Powell applied in Bakke, see ante, at 224, and acknowledges that he applied that standard in Fullilove as well, ante, at 218-219. Moreover, Chief Justice Burger also expressly concluded that the program we considered in Fullilove was valid under any of the tests articulated in Bakke, which of course included Justice Powell's. 448 U. S., at 492. The Court thus adopts a standard applied in Fullilove at the same time it questions that case's continued vitality and accuses it of departing from prior law. I continue to believe that the Fullilove case was incorrectly decided, see id., at 532-554 (Stevens, J., dissenting), but neither my dissent nor that filed by Justice Stewart, id., at 522-532, contained any suggestion that the issue the Court was resolving had been decided before.13 As was true
13 Of course, Justice Stewart believed that his view, disapproving of racial classifications of any kind, was consistent with this Court's precedents. See ante, at 234-235, citing 448 U. S., at 523-526. But he did not claim that the question whether the Federal Government could engage in race-conscious affirmative action had been decided before Fullilove. The fact that a Justice dissents from an opinion means that he disagrees with the result; it does not usually mean that he believes the decision so departs from the fabric of the law that its reasoning ought to be repudiated at the
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