Supreme Court guts affirmative action in college admissions

The Supreme Court on Thursday dealt a major blow to affirmative action in higher education, striking down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

In a ruling divided along ideological lines, the high court found that the two universities discriminated against white and Asian American applicants by using race-conscious admissions policies that benefited applicants from underrepresented backgrounds.

Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority in the case. He was joined by the five other conservative justices. The three liberals dissented.

The decision undercuts long-standing admissions policies at colleges and universities that use race as one of many factors in evaluating applicants. Those policies relied on prior Supreme Court cases that permitted the use of race as part of a “holistic” process meant to promote a diverse student body. Education and civil rights groups say they fear ending the use of race in admissions will exacerbate inequality for years to come. Many pointed to the public institutions that have struggled to enroll diverse freshman classes in nine states that have already banned the practice.

While Thursday’s ruling does not explicitly overturn those prior cases, their reasoning appears weakened, if not dead. The ruling appears to find unlawful most of the programs that elite universities use to try to preserve racial and ethnic diversity in their student bodies.

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Roberts wrote.

“The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” he continued. “Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”

The chief justice stressed in his ruling, however, that the court was not entirely prohibiting schools from taking account of applicants’ experiences related to race as long as such factors aren’t a subterfuge for explicit consideration of race.

“Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspira-

tion, or otherwise,” Roberts wrote. “But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”

Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson each wrote separate dissents joined by the court’s other Democratic appointee, Elena Kagan. (Jackson, President Joe Biden’s only appointee to the high court and its newest member, recused herself from the Harvard case because she served for years on one of Harvard’s governing boards, but she participated in the North Carolina case.)

“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” Sotomayor wrote in her 69-page dissent. “It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

While Roberts never explicitly says the court is foreclosing the use of race in admissions, Sotomayor asserts that her colleagues in the majority have done just that.

“By ending race-conscious college admissions, this Court closes the door of opportunity that the Court’s precedents helped open to young students of every race,” wrote Sotomayor, who read portions of her dissent aloud–delivering the first oral dissent by a justice since 2019. She declared that the court announced “a requirement designed to ensure all race-conscious plans fail.”