I'm Brian Lerer. This is my daily politics podcast from WNYC Studios. It's Friday, January 28th.

This week, while all eyes have been on the resignation of Justice Breyer and who President Biden will name to replace him,

there's one other piece of Supreme Court news related and worthy of attention, a new challenge to affirmative action

in college admissions at the Supreme Court. Opponents of affirmative action say that colleges

and universities are violating the rights of white and Asian American students,

the Supreme Court has now announced it will revisit the question that we might have thought

they already settled, this time with suits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina

tailored for the current conservative majority. We'll talk about that now with Elie Mistal,

Justice Correspondent for the

nation. He is also the Alfred Nobler Fellow at the Type Media Center. Ellie, always great to have you. Welcome

back to WNYC. Hi, Brian. How are you? I'm very happy to not longer have to drive a truck around

the Supreme Court screaming at Briar to retire. It's a, like it opened up my

schedule. Oh, that was you in that truck, was it? So let's talk about the affirmative action case.

What's different about this case? Wasn't this settled? Weren't there multiple cases? Hasn't the

Supreme Court long ago told colleges and universities what the guidelines are and where the rails are?

Yeah, look, affirmative action is settled law, but the people who are against it keep trying

and trying and trying, and much like the abortion debate, they finally, they haven't changed

the law, but they've changed the makeup of the courts, and now they think they can win.

The difference between this case and the last case,

which was Abigail Fisher v. University of Texas, one, two, not to be confused with Fisher

1, is that this time, instead of a mediocre performing white girl, they have high-performing

Asian students who are claiming that affirmative action

...