[DonsDiscountGas]

Racial discrimination has been explicitly illegal, and affirmative action - as currently practiced - is racial discrimination. You're right that it's not legislation, it's straight up illegal. The courts have been tying themselves in knots around this but somebody finally just read the law. If Congress wants to make some kinds of racial discrimination legal, they need to actually pass a law saying so.

The original usage of the phrase is reasonable enough[0], but that's not what this lawsuit was about.

[0] > On March 6, 1961, shortly after taking office, President John F. Kennedy signed Executive Order 10925, which required all federal contractors to take “affirmative action”—the first use of the phrase in this context—to ensure all job applicants and employees were treated equally, regardless of race, creed, color or national origin. https://www.history.com/topics/us-government-and-politics/af...