In a highly anticipated decision, the Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that the “[r]ace-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional,” and both are in violation of the Equal Protection Clause.
This ruling by the high court, which now consists of a conservative supermajority, “is the culmination of a decades-long effort to end the consideration of race in admissions.”
Much like last year’s reversal of the landmark Roe v. Wade precedent, today’s ruling “effectively overturned the 2003 ruling Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court said race could be considered as a factor in the admissions process because universities had a compelling interest in maintaining diverse campuses.”
While the majority opinion did not explicitly overrule the former precedents, Justice Clarence Thomas, who has long been critical of affirmative action, wrote a concurring 58-page opinion, stating “that the Grutter case was ‘for all intents and purposes, overruled.’”
It is safe to say that decades of precedent have now effectively been scrapped, including a 1978 ruling which upheld using race in a limited consideration as a way to fight the historic levels of discrimination faced by people of color in this country.
As the New York Times writes, “In disavowing race as a factor in achieving educational diversity, the court all but ensured that the student population at the campuses of elite institutions will become whiter and more Asian and less Black and Latino.”
In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote that this was “truly a tragedy for us all.”
Former First Lady Michelle Obama released her thoughts on the decision via Twitter, pointing out that beneficiaries of affirmative action policies aren’t always race-based. “Students on my campus and countless others across the country were – and continue to be – granted special consideration for admissions,” she said.
Obama continued in this vein, “Others have families who can afford coaches to help them run faster or hit a ball harder. Others go to high schools with lavish resources for tutors and extensive standardized test prep that help them score higher on college entrance exams,” incisively adding “We don’t usually question if those students belong. So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level.”
Pundits expect this decision to have repercussions that extend beyond higher education, including K-12 schools and the workplace “as similar arguments could be made under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment.”