U.S. Supreme Court Guts Affirmative Action In College Admissions

WASHINGTON, DC— The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ended race-conscious affirmative action policies used for decades by colleges and universities, forcing institutions of higher learning to find other ways to achieve more diverse student bodies.

The court's conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest private and public colleges, respectively, finding that both violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

The two separate but similar cases before the court — Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College — were brought by a conservative activist group that argues the Constitution forbids the use of race-conscious admissions policies.

“The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

The admissions programs at Harvard and UNC “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,” Roberts wrote.

However, he added that “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, inspiration, or otherwise.”

In a strongly worded dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said that “Equal educational opportunity is a prerequisite to achieving racial equality in our Nation.”

“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. 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.”

Sotomayor was joined in her dissent by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. Jackson — the court’s first Black female justice — recused herself from the Harvard case because she served on a board at the university said in a separate dissent that the decision is “truly a tragedy for us all.”

In her dissent, Jackson responded to what she called a “prolonged attack” on affirmative action by Justice Clarence Thomas, for decades in the minority in cases coming before the court. He directly confronted Jackson's view “almost all of life’s outcomes may be unhesitatingly ascribed to race,”he wrote in a 10-page concurring opinion.

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces “colorblindness for all” by legal fiat,” Jackson wrote in her dissent. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

Former President Barack Obama and Michelle Obama, both of whom benefitted from race-conscious admissions policies, issued separate statements.

"Today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who's wondering what their future holds — and what kinds of chances will be open to them," the former first lady wrote. "Today is a reminder that we've got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhood."

In a shorter statement, the former president said, "Like any policy, affirmative action wasn't perfect. But it allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it's up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve — and help students everywhere benefit from new perspectives."

The Supreme Court had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016.

But that was before the three appointees of former President Donald Trump joined the court. At arguments in late October, all six conservative justices expressed doubts about the practice, which had been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978.

Lower courts also had upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.

In the cases before the court, the plaintiffs asked the justices to strike down the landmark 1978 ruling in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that upheld schools’ use of race-conscious admissions policies, and Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 case affirming it. Writing for the majority in that case, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said the University of Michigan Law School’s use of a race-conscious admissions program did not unduly harm nonminority candidates.

Specifically, the plaintiffs argued Harvard’s policy violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act prohibiting institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating based on race. Because of the policies, they argued, Asian American students were less likely to be admitted to Harvard than similarly qualified white, Black or Hispanic applicants.

The group argued the University of North Carolina violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protections clause, which bars racial discrimination by government entities, by considering race when it’s not necessary to do so to achieve a racially diverse student body.

In the North Carolina case, lawyer Patrick Strawbridge told the justices “racial classifications are wrong,” as established in Brown v. Board of Education, saying the Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark ruling striking down racial segregation in public schools.

Importantly, the majority opinion did not specifically say the court was overturning Grutter v. Bollinger.

But, Thomas wrote in his concurring opinion, “The Court’s opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled. And, it sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.”

The majority opinion said the court has "permitted race-based admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions. University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.”

The only institutions of higher education explicitly left out of the ruling are the nation's military academies, Roberts wrote, suggesting that national security interests could affect the legal analysis.

Students for Fair Admissions, the group that brought the lawsuits against Harvard and the University of North Carolina, is headed by Edward Blum, a conservative legal strategist who has spent years fighting affirmative action.

In a statement after the court agreed to hear the case, Blum said both Harvard and the University of North Carolina “have racially gerrymandered their freshman classes in order to achieve prescribed racial quotas.”

“Every college applicant should be judged as a unique individual, not as some representative of a racial or ethnic group,” he said at the time.

Blum also bankrolled a 2016 Supreme Court case Fisher v. University of Texas, in which a white student said she had been denied admission to the school because of her race. The court narrowly upheld race-conscious admissions policy in that case, but warned that not all affirmative action policies would pass constitutional muster.

Many predominantly white colleges and universities developed affirmative action plans in the 1960s and 1970s as they struggled to attract people from historically disadvantaged and underrepresented communities. Polices were also created to promote greater inclusion of women.

Since the late 1970s, the Supreme Court has three times upheld affirmative action on the grounds that institutions have a compelling interest to address past discrimination that shut nonwhite students out of higher learning. Justices have also agreed with arguments that more diverse student bodies promoted cross-racial understanding.

Race is among a confluence of admissions standards, including grades, test scores and extracurricular activities, but institutions say it can be a deciding factor when considering large numbers of equally qualified students for a limited number of spots.

About a quarter of schools said in a 2019 National Association of College Admission Counseling survey said race had a “considerable” or “moderate” influence on admissions, while nearly 60 percent said race had no influence at all.

Institutions of higher learning have said that they use race in a limited way, but that eliminating it as a factor altogether would make it much harder to achieve a student body that looks like America.

At the eight Ivy League universities, the number of nonwhite students increased by 55 percent from 2010 to 2021, according to federal data. That group, which includes, Native American, Asian, Black, Hispanic, Pacific Islander and biracial students, accounted for 35 percent of students on those campuses in 2021, up from 27 percent in 2010.

The end of affirmative action in higher education in California, Michigan, Washington state and elsewhere led to a steep drop in minority enrollment in the states’ leading public universities.

They are among nine states that already prohibit any consideration of race in admissions to their public colleges and universities. The others are: Arizona, Florida, Georgia, Nebraska, New Hampshire and Oklahoma.

In 2020, California voters easily rejected a ballot measure to bring back affirmative action.

A poll last month by The Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research showed 63 percent of U.S. adults say the court should allow colleges to consider race as part of the admissions process, yet few believe students’ race should ultimately play a major role in decisions. A Pew Research Center survey released last week found that half of Americans disapprove of considerations of applicants’ race, while a third approve.

The chief justice and Jackson received their undergraduate and law degrees from Harvard. Two other justices, Elena Kagan and Neil Gorsuch, went to law school there, and Kagan was the first woman to serve as the law school’s dean.

Every U.S. college and university the justices attended, save one, urged the court to preserve race-conscious admissions.

Those schools — Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Notre Dame and Holy Cross — joined briefs in defense of Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions plans.

Only Justice Amy Coney Barrett’s undergraduate alma mater, Rhodes College, in Memphis, Tennessee, was not involved in the cases.

Affirmative action hasn’t cured inequities in education, Sarah Hinger senior staff attorney in the Racial Justice Program at the American Civil Liberties Union, recently told EducationWeek, “but it has been an important tool in an effort to at least partially recognize the substantial inequities that exist and that people are positioned with when applying to colleges, and on college campuses.”

The Associated Press contributed reporting.