The US Supreme Court sharply limited the use of race as a factor in university admissions. The decision rolls back decades of precedents that had allowed affirmative action programs in higher education.
The case involved admissions policy at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
Read the full decision, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
“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, which was centered on the UNC case. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
The decision, she added, would make it so that it “will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.”
Sotomayor, who wrote the dissenting opinion for Harvard, pointed out that holistic grading systems also include legacy admissions, which make up a disproportionate percentage of Harvard applicants offered admission each year.
“Stated simply, race is one small piece of a much larger admissions puzzle where most of the pieces disfavor underrepresented racial minorities,” Sotomayor wrote. “The Court’s suggestion that an already advantaged racial group is ‘disadvantaged’ because of a limited use of race is a myth.”
(Updates with quotes from the dissents.)
