On Thursday, in a historic decision, the Supreme Court severely limited, if not effectively ended, the use of affirmative action in college admissions. With a vote of 6-3, the justices ruled that the admissions programs used by the University of North Carolina and Harvard College violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause, which bars racial discrimination by government entities.
The majority effectively, though not explicitly, overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race “as one factor among many, in an effort to assemble a student body that is diverse in ways broader than race.”
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Chief Justice John Roberts explained that college admissions programs can consider race merely to allow an applicant to explain how their race influenced their character in a way that would have a concrete effect on the university. But a student “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor disagreed, in an opinion that was joined by Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson and Elena Kagan. Sotomayor emphasized that the majority’s decision had rolled “back decades of precedent and momentous progress” and “cement[ed] a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.” She also accused the majority of being color blind to the reality of “an endemically segregated society.”
“Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality,” she wrote.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett agreed with the Roberts opinion.
The court said that universities were free to consider an applicant’s background — whether, for example, they grew up experiencing racism — in weighing their application over more academically qualified students, but deciding primarily based on whether the applicant is white, black or other is itself racial discrimination, Roberts wrote.
He said, “Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Affirmative action policies arose in the 1960s from the Civil Rights Movement aiming to help address the legacy of discrimination in higher education against African Americans.
Harvard and UNC, which brought the motion, like a number of other competitive US schools, consider an applicant’s race or ethnicity as a factor to ensure a diverse student body and representation of minorities.
While conservatives agreed with the decision, believing that now the college admission process will be fairer, and argued that affirmative action is fundamentally unfair and that the policy has outlived its need due to significant gains by black people and other minorities, progressives and liberals see the ruling as another major setback.
Democratic Senator Cory Booker via Twitter called it a “devastating blow” to the US education system, and said, “Affirmative action has been a tool to break down systemic barriers and we must continue to advance our ideals of inclusivity & opportunity for all.”
