June 30, (THEWILL) – The US Supreme Court has struck down affirmative action policies at colleges and universities that use race as a factor in deciding who is admitted.
In a majority ruling of 6-2 on Thursday, a six-member conservative justice held that Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill were illegally discriminating based on race and violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. said the Constitution forbids treating people differently based on their race.
“The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of their skin colour is not like treating them differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well,” he wrote.
In dissent, liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the majority of ignoring America’s history.
“Our country has never been colour-blind,” Jackson wrote.
“Today, this court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. The court cements a superficial rule of colour-blindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter,” Sotomayor added.
“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.
“A benefit to a student, who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination.
“Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university.
“In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote.
The vote was 6-3 in the North Carolina case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, from which Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a former member of Harvard’s Board of Overseers, recused herself.
Reacting to the ruling, President Joe Biden said, “I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision. Discrimination still exists in America. Today’s decision does not change that.”
He proposed new guidance for colleges in the wake of the decision, urging them to take into account the adversity a student has overcome in the admissions process.
“We need a new path forward, a path consistent with the law that protects diversity and expands opportunity,” he said.
About the Author
