Liberal governments like those running California, New York, and Detroit are rolling out reparations proposals that treat Americans differently depending on their skin color. That’s a constitutional problem.
The 14th Amendment says that governments cannot deny “any person” the “equal protection of the laws.” This means, as the Supreme Court says, that the law applies to everyone “without any differences of race, of color, or of nationality—it is universal in its application.”
The problem that equal protection poses for reparations is obvious: Reparations discriminate by race and make one group more “equal” than others.
To overcome this defect, reparations supporters argue that the Constitution doesn’t mean what it says. Although it seems to prohibit discrimination against “any person,” they argue that it prohibits only discrimination against…
