Supreme Court bans African Americans from getting college admissions

On June 29, the Supreme Court struck down the Affirmative Action Program at the University of North Carolina (UNC) and Harvard. This was a major victory for conservative activists, ending the systematic accounting for race in college admissions. The edition told in more detail NBC News.

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The Court ruled that both programs violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and were therefore illegal. The vote was 6-3 on the UNC case and 6-2 on the Harvard case.

The decision has been welcomed by prominent conservatives who say the Constitution should be "colorblind" and 45th President Donald Trump called the decision "a great day for America."

However, he was condemned by liberals who argue that affirmative action programs are a key tool for correcting racial discrimination.

“It wasn’t perfect, but there’s no doubt that it opened up new opportunities for those who have too often been denied the chance to show how fast they can rise throughout our history,” said former First Lady Michelle Obama.

The court effectively overturned a 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger ruling in which it stated that race could be seen as a factor in the enrollment process. In doing so, the court overturned decades of precedent, including one ruling dated 1978 that upheld limited race-reference in university admissions as a way to combat historical discrimination against blacks and other minorities.

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Chief Justice John Roberts did not explicitly say that previous precedents had been overturned. But Conservative Judge Clarence Thomas, only the second black judge to serve on the court, said Grutter's case was "for everyone."

Roberts wrote that both programs "do not have sufficiently targeted and measurable goals to justify the use of race, inevitably use race in a negative way, contain racial stereotypes, and have no meaningful end results."

Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman to serve on the court, wrote that the decision was "a tragedy for all of us."

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, another liberal and first Hispanic judge, wrote that the court "blocks the path for development and sets aside decades of precedent and important progress."

Sotomayor, as a token of her displeasure, read out a lengthy dissenting opinion into the courtroom.

Thomas, a longtime critic of affirmative action programs, wrote his own 58-page opinion in which he called the programs in question "unguided racial preferences designed to provide a certain amount of racial miscegenation in incoming classes."

Both policies, he argues, "contradict our Constitution and our national ideal of equality."

The decision is another example of how the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, is achieving long-standing goals of conservative legal activists. In 2022, the court overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed abortion rights.

The court's decision is a major blow to the universities themselves, which say race is vital to ensuring diversity in student groups.

The few schools with extremely competitive admissions programs have been hardest hit. They predicted that the anti-college decisions would lead to a significant reduction in the enrollment of minority students and would require admissions committees to experiment with new racially neutral plans. The vast majority of colleges accept almost all applicants and will not be so affected.

Dozens of schools with race-conscious admissions policies include Yale, Brown, Columbia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago and Dartmouth.

Roberts left open the possibility that colleges would consider discussing race in an individual student's application, citing the example of an individual who has personally experienced racial discrimination.

According to him, the student "should be treated on the basis of his personal experience, and not on the basis of race."

He remarked that the ruling did not deal with the consideration of race in the military academies. The administration of U.S. President Joe Biden has warned that a ruling limiting affirmative action would be detrimental to the U.S. military, which depends on a "highly skilled and diverse officer corps" educated at military academies like West Point as well as civilian universities.

It is unclear how flexible colleges will be in adopting racially neutral programs aimed at building a diverse student body. Those who defend the program say the policy often fails, leading to a decline in the number of blacks and Hispanics who want to go to college.

The ruling is likely to have implications far beyond higher education, including in K-12 schools, and increase pressure on colleges to develop workable racially neutral programs that promote racial diversity.

This decision could, among other things, lead to future challenges to diversity programs used by employers, as similar arguments could be made under Title VII of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits discrimination in employment.

In a 2003 ruling, Judge Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that affirmative action programs would no longer be necessary by 2028.

Conservative Judge Brett Kavanaugh said the June 29 ruling would apply primarily to those entering college in 2028, and that the ruling was therefore consistent with the 2003 ruling.

Affirmative action programs undertaken to correct historical discrimination have been a controversial issue for many years, strongly supported by educational institutions as vital to promoting diversity and denounced by conservatives as contrary to the idea that racial equality is when all races are equal.

Both theses were put forward by a group called Students for Fair Enrollment, led by conservative activist Ed Blum.

"The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use the race and ethnicity of students as a factor in their acceptance or rejection has been repealed," they said in a statement.

The legal debate that led to the latest ruling was left unresolved by a split 1978 Supreme Court ruling in which judges banned racial quotas but left the door open for some consideration of race in enrollment. This then led to a decision in 2003 which again reluctantly allowed some affirmative action programs.

In 2016, when the Supreme Court last ruled on affirmative action programs, the judges upheld the University of Texas at Austin admissions policy with a 4–3 vote.

Bloom's group argues that any consideration of race in college admissions is illegal under both Title VI and the Constitution. They said UNC's admissions policy discriminated against white and Asian applicants, while Harvard's policy discriminated against Asians. In both cases, the lower courts ruled in favor of the universities.

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In defending their policies, universities and their supporters, including the Biden administration, civil rights groups, businesses, and former military leaders, have argued that excluding anyone on the basis of race is entirely different from striving for diversity on campus. Universities say race is just one factor that is seen as part of each candidate's broad individual analysis.

UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskevich said the university “remains strongly committed to bringing together talented students from diverse backgrounds and backgrounds; he continues to make accessible, high-quality education available to residents of North Carolina and other states."

Harvard leaders issued a statement confirming their commitment to "the fundamental principle that profound and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend on a community of people of diverse backgrounds, perspectives, and life experiences."

According to them, the university will now "determine how to preserve, in accordance with the new court case, our core values."

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