Michigan Supreme Court Blesses a Woke Inquisition

Justice must take a back seat now to “diversity, equity, and inclusion."

Incorporating the depraved racial ideology of the woke Left into the fabric of state courts is abominable, a Michigan Supreme Court justice argued as his impassioned pleas against creating a modern judicial inquisition to enforce wokeness on the bench fell on deaf ears.

Justice David Viviano was weighing in on the court’s profoundly un-American Administrative Order No. 2022-1 of January 5 that created a commission “with the initial goal of exploring issues related to the demographics of the workforce that support our judiciary and training within the judicial branches.”

Viviano dissented from a recent majority opinion creating the commission to weave the leftist holy trinity known as DEI –diversity, equity, and inclusion— into Michigan’s judicial system.

The stated mission of this new inquisition, the 24-member Commission on Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in the Michigan Judiciary, is “to assess and work towards elimination of demographic and other disparities within the Michigan judiciary and justice system,” the order states.

According to the order, the commission came out of the work of a DEI Committee that was formed in January 2021 “with the initial goal of exploring issues related to the demographics of the workforce that support our judiciary and training within the judicial branches.” Over time the committee’s “work grew to include exploration of other topics that impact our communities.”

The commission, the order continues, will develop policies and standards to promote diversity, equity, and inclusion, assist in eliminating disparities within the justice system, assist local courts in implementing DEI-related plans, and “increase participation of members from under-represented communities in judicial branch leadership.”

But Viviano, whose dissent was joined by Justice Brian Zahra, sounded the alarm, writing that diversity, equity, and inclusion is “a catchphrase that is politically fraught—and for that reason alone should be approached with extreme caution by the judicial branch.”

Despite “an expansive purpose statement,” the order “nowhere establishes the scope or meaning of the critical terms, ‘diversity,’ ‘equity,’ and ‘inclusion,’” Viviano wrote.

“It is no small thing to leave unstated the meaning of ‘diversity, equity, and inclusion’,” he wrote. “This catchphrase occupies disputed terrain in our politically polarized society.”

“I am concerned that the Commission will endow these core concepts with meanings that will produce heated disputes and call into question the judiciary’s neutrality,” he wrote.

“The way to be equitable, diverse, and inclusive is to stop taking account of race and other protected characteristics,” Viviano wrote.

“By plunging ahead, I believe that this Court, and the commission it creates today, will serve only to engender conflict and undermine the public’s faith in the judicial branch as impartial arbiters.”

A useful idiot on the court dismissed...

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