In a 6-3 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled on Thursday that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) violated the 14th Amendment by considering applicants’ race during the admissions process. The decision effectively ends affirmative action policies for institutions of higher education.
“Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions 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, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote. “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Roberts’ majority opinion was joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, and Amy Coney Barrett. While Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kegan dissented in both cases, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented in the UNC case, but recused herself in the Harvard case.
Thursday’s decision involves a nonprofit known as Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), which filed lawsuits alleging that Harvard and UNC’s race-based admissions policies violate provisions of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
In the Harvard case, plaintiffs claimed the school “artificially raised the standards of admission for Asian-American applicants” and that “Asians were admitted at a lower rate than whites, even though
