Supreme Court Issues Affirmative Action Decision in Harvard and UNC Case

The United States Supreme Court issued its long-anticipated decision in the Harvard and University of North Carolina affirmative action case in late June. The Court’s decision, which struck down affirmative action policies Harvard and the University of North Carolina, will significantly impact colleges and universities around the nation. The Court declared that the race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina were unlawful and sharply curtailed a policy that had long been a pillar of higher education. The vote was 6 to 3, with the court’s liberal members in dissent.

“The Harvard and U.N.C. admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the equal protection clause” Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote for the majority. “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.” Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench, a rare move that signals profound disagreement, and said that affirmative action was crucial to countering persistent and systematic racial discrimination. “The court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society,” she said in her written dissent.

In her dissent, Justice Sotomayor wrote that the majority had abandoned principled adjudication. “At bottom,” she wrote, “the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law.”

The decision all but ensured that the student population at the campuses of elite institutions would become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino. It was also expected to set off a scramble as schools revisit their admissions practices, and it could complicate diversity efforts elsewhere, narrowing the pipeline of highly credentialed minority candidates and making it harder for employers to consider race in hiring.