Barkley Will Give $5M to Auburn After SCOTUS Ends Affirmative Action

NBA great Charles Barkley has amended his will to leave as much as $5 million to Auburn University, his alma mater, upon his death in response to the Supreme Court overturning affirmative action in college admissions.

Speaking to TMZ Sports, Barkley said that his phone had been ringing off the hook since the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in a 6-3 ruling.

“That’s just my way of trying to make sure Auburn stays diverse. After that ruling yesterday, my phone was blowing up. I was talking to my friends and said, ‘I need to make sure Black folks always have a place at Auburn,'” he said.

Charles Barkley looks on during Game Two of the 2023 NBA Finals between the Miami Heat and the Denver Nuggets on June 4, 2023, at the Ball Arena in Denver, Colorado. (Justin Tafoya/NBAE via Getty Images)

Black students reportedly comprise just 5 percent of Auburn’s student body.

As Breitbart News reported, the Supreme Court argued that affirmative action violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

The Supreme Court upheld racial preferences — euphemistically called “affirmative action” — in college admissions in the Bakke decision in 1978. Since then, debates have raged about whether to use quotas, point systems, or other ways of favoring one applicant over another based on the color of their skin, with the Supreme Court upholding some approaches while trimming the sails on others. Conservatives have insisted for half a century that the Constitution does not allow any of those approaches.

The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment commands that no state shall “deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” The Supreme Court has always acknowledged that the central promise of the Equal Protection Clause is to forbid laws and public policies that discriminate on the basis of race.

While the Fourteenth Amendment applies only to state governments — which includes state and local public universities — Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 also extends racial discrimination to institutions that accept federal tax money, such as in grants and tuition aid. That applies to almost every private university.

The ruling sparked fierce reactions from Democrats and other race-based institutions, with the NAACP calling it “hate-inspired.”