Walter Olson:

Reverse discrimination suits produce a “Through the Looking Glass” effect, in which some liberal legal thinkers suddenly discover (and, to be fair, some conservatives suddenly forget) that job-bias suits are protracted, expensive things that carry a high social cost. Thus, in Monday’s dissent, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the Court’s leading advocate of broad employer liability, expresses touching concern for the plight of employers who “can anticipate costly disparate treatment litigation” after the firefighters’ victory. Despite a valiant effort to put the best interpretation on New Haven’s handling of the affair, Ginsburg’s dissent failed to convince Kennedy’s majority even to send the case back to the lower courts, as the Obama administration had urged; instead, the city lost the case outright.