The Supreme Court, in a 6-3 decision, has ended affirmative action in college admissions. The opinion was written by Chief Justice John Roberts.
In the case of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, along with the University of North Carolina, the conservative-led Supreme Court ruled that the practice of considering race when considering prospective students violated the Equal Protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
From SCOTUS Blog:
The court says that it 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.”
Roberts wrote:
The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. 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.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a scathing dissent calling the decision “indefensible.” She was joined by Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson. From Sotomayor:
[The decision] cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.
The result of today’s decision is that a person’s skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person’s individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
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This story is breaking and will be updated.
