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PaperclipPerfector  11mo ago (text post)   28285 thread views

Culture War Roundup for the week of May 13, 2024

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https://reason.com/volokh/2024/05/15/congress-is-preparing-to-restore-quotas-in-college-admissions/

Apparently, there's a new privacy bill in congress, with a maximally bad attachment to it, and quite likely to pass. (what kind of monster would be against privacy? )

Almost all kinds of decision making (anything that involves computers seems like) are classed as an algorithm.

If your 'algorithm' causes disparate impact, it's bad and you must change it or you're open to lawsuits. Yearly review of the 'algorithm' is mandatory, first review in 2 years after bill is passed..

Covers: every bigger business (iirc 750 employees+), all social networks and...??all nonprofits using computers to process 'personal data' to submit yearly evaluations if they're not causing 'disparate impact'. Excepted: the entire finance industry, government contractors.

It also explicitly allows discrimination on the basis of a protected characteristics (race, sex etc) for the purpose of

27 (ii) diversifying an applicant, participant, or customer pool;

Here's a bigger excerpt:

Here's how it works. APRA's quota provision, section 13 of APRA, says that any entity that "knowingly develops" an algorithm for its business must evaluate that algorithm "to reduce the risk of" harm. And it defines algorithmic "harm" to include causing a "disparate impact" on the basis of "race, color, religion, national origin, sex, or disability" (plus, weirdly, "political party registration status"). APRA Sec. 13(c)(1)(B)(vi)(IV)&(V).

At bottom, it's as simple as that. If you use an algorithm for any important decision about people—to hire, promote, advertise, or otherwise allocate goods and services—you must ensure that you've reduced the risk of disparate impact.

The closer one looks, however, the worse it gets. At every turn, APRA expands the sweep of quotas. For example, APRA does not confine itself to hiring and promotion. It provides that, within two years of the bill's enactment, institutions must reduce any disparate impact the algorithm causes in access to housing, education, employment, healthcare, insurance, or credit.

No one escapes. The quota mandate covers practically every business and nonprofit in the country, other than financial institutions. APRA sec. 2(10). And its regulatory sweep is not limited, as you might think, to sophisticated and mysterious artificial intelligence algorithms. A "covered algorithm" is broadly defined as any computational process that helps humans make a decision about providing goods or services or information. APRA, Section 2 (8). It covers everything from a ground-breaking AI model to an aging Chromebook running a spreadsheet. In order to call this a privacy provision, APRA says that a covered algorithm must process personal data, but that means pretty much every form of personal data that isn't deidentified, with the exception of employee data. APRA, Section 2 (9).

If college admissions were determined by “algorithm” (paper or digital) then that algorithm would be obtainable in lawsuit discovery. If that algorithm involved rectifying disparate impact (to apply this law) by bolstering eg. black and Hispanic scores, it would directly contravene not only last year’s SCOTUS judgment but also the previous judgment that ruled direct quotas explicitly unconstitutional. It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.

It would appear, therefore, that using this new law to reimplement affirmative action would not be legal.

Is there no way for Democrats to make the court more favorable ? E.g. by say, packing it with wise latinas?

The Democrats could technically pack the Supreme Court by abolishing the senate filibuster and using a 51 seat majority + the presidency to do so, sure. I suspect that at least several senators would balk at it, though, such that their current majority is insufficient. If they got back to 56/57 seats it would be viable, although of course as soon as the GOP had a President and senate majority it would be immediately neutered by them doing the same.

I believe the scotus size was set by statute, meaning that the house is required to consent to an expansion of the court size. If only the senate and president had to conspire to add additional justices, I figure it would have happened already.

Yes. There's some !!fun!! questions about what happens if the Senate and the President does it anyway, but (probably?) not a target.

Nah, Manchin and Sinema both objected even when the Dems had the House.

I’m unsure the scotus would seat the new justices under a separation powers approach.

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