The high court voted 6-3 along ideological lines, with the majority finding the use of race-based admission practices at universities violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law, unfairly denying Asian American and white applicants of university spots.
The case, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, involved admissions practices at two major US universities: Harvard in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Both institutions had admissions regulations that allowed race to be a deciding factor between applicants.
“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,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion.
“We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” he added.
Other civil rights movements at the time also sought equality for Native Americans, women, and LGBTQ people, and enjoyed various degrees of success. For some, similar affirmative action practices were incorporated into the hiring and admissions practices of various public institutions.
Successive Supreme Court cases had already weakened affirmative action practices in the US well before Thursday’s ruling, including allowing individual states to prohibit the practice.
However, the high court on Thursday didn’t totally dismiss race-based considerations, it just said they can’t be used as a deciding factor between applicants.
“At the same time, as all parties agree, 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,” Roberts wrote.
“But, despite the dissent’s assertion to the contrary, universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today,” he added.
However, the three liberal justices - all three of whom are women of minority ethnicities - sharply dissented. In a minority opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor excoriated the majority for “revisionist history” by citing Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, the 1954 decision that struck down racially-exclusive schools.
Sotomayor wrote that the ruling’s interpretation of the 14th Amendment is “grounded in the illusion that racial inequality was a problem of a different generation.”
“Entrenched racial inequality remains a reality today,” she said. “That is true for society writ large and, more specifically, for Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC), two institutions with a long history of racial exclusion.”
“Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal,” she continued. “What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality.”
Speaking on the ruling on Thursday, US President Joe Biden said inequality remained a fact in the United States, regardless of the high court’s decision. He said colleges “should not abandon our commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds.”
He suggested that students who have already met certain objective standards should still be judged for college admissions based on the “adversity” they had faced in life, to ensure that students who “faced tougher challenges” and “demonstrated more grit and determination” are not denied admission.
Biden also said he was directing the US Department of Education to deter legacy admissions programs as well, saying colleges should prioritize applicants who are the first in their families to attend college.
When asked by a journalist if the high court was “rogue,” Biden replied, “it is not a normal court.”