Supreme Court strikes down college affirmative action programs (2024)
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard in a major victory for conservative activists, ending the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process.
The court ruled that both programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and are therefore unlawful. The vote was 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, in which liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was recused.
The decision was hailed by prominent conservatives, who say the Constitution should be "colorblind," with former President Donald Trump calling it "a great day for America." Liberals, however, condemned the ruling, saying affirmative action is a key tool for remedying historic race discrimination.
"It wasn’t perfect, but there’s no doubt that it helped offer new ladders of opportunity for those who, throughout our history, have too often been denied a chance to show how fast they can climb," said Michelle Obama, the first Black first lady.
President Joe Biden called the decision a "severe disappointment," adding that his administration would provide guidance about how colleges could maintain diversity without violating the ruling.
The court effectively overturned the2003 ruling Grutter v. Bollinger, in which it said race could be considered as a factor in the admissions process because universities had a compelling interest in maintaining diverse campuses. In doing so, the court scrapped decades of precedent, including a ruling dating to 1978, that upheld a limited consideration of race in university admissions to combat historic discrimination against Black people and other minority groups.
In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts did not explicitly say the former precedents were overruled, but in a concurring opinion, conservative Justice Clarence Thomas,only the second Black justice to be appointed to the court, said the Grutter case was, "for all intents and purposes, overruled."
Roberts wrote that 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."
The ruling exposed stark divisions among the justices, who sit on a court that is more diverse than it has ever been.
Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the court, wrote in a dissenting opinion that the ruling was "truly a tragedy for us all."
Liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Hispanic justice, wrote that the court "stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress."
Sotomayor, in a sign of her displeasure, read a lengthy summary of her dissenting opinion in the courtroom.
Thomas, a long-term critic of affirmative action, wrote his own 58-page opinion, in which he called the programs in question "rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in the entering classes."
Both policies "fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our nation's equality ideal," he added.
Jackson stared straight ahead while Thomas read his opinion from the bench.
The ruling is another example in which the court, which has a 6-3 conservative majority, has delivered on the long-held goals of conservative legal activists. It follows the seismic ruling last year that overturned Roe v. Wade, the landmark 1973 decision that guaranteed a right to abortion.
The court’s decision is a major blow to the most selective universities, which say some consideration of race is vital in ensuring they have diverse student bodies.
The small number of schools that have extremely competitive admissions programs are the most affected. They have predicted that rulings against the colleges will lead to a significant drop in the enrollment of minority students and require admissions officers to experiment with new race-neutral plans to counteract the impact. The vast majority of colleges accept almost all applicants and will not be as affected.
Among the dozens of institutions that take race into account are Yale University, Brown University, Columbia University, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Chicago and Dartmouth College.
Polls: Public opinion on affirmative action remains complicated amid Supreme Court ruling
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Roberts left open the possibility of colleges' considering the discussion of race in an individual student's application, citing the example of someone who personally encountered racial discrimination.
The student "must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race," he added.
He also noted that the ruling does not address considering race in military academies. The Biden administration had warned that a ruling curbing affirmative action would detrimentally affect the U.S. military, which depends on a “well-qualified and diverse officer corps” educated at institutions like the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, as well as civilian universities.
It is unclear what flexibility colleges will have in adopting race-neutral programs to foster diverse student bodies. Those defending affirmative action said such policies will often fail, leading to declines in Black and Hispanic enrollments. The challengers point to examples in the nine states that already ban the practice as evidence that considering race is not essential.
The ruling is likely to have repercussions far beyond higher education, including on K-12 schools, and it puts increased pressure on colleges to come up with workable race-neutral programs that would foster racial diversity. The decision could also lead to future challenges to racial 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 the 2003 ruling, Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote that affirmative action programs should no longer be needed by 2028.
Conservative Justice Brett Kavanaugh, in a concurring opinion, said that Thursday's ruling would apply first to those starting college in 2028 and that the decision therefore did not conflict with the 2003 ruling.
Affirmative action, introduced to redress historic discrimination, has been acontentious issuefor years, strongly supported by educational institutions and corporate America as being vital to fostering diversity and condemned by conservatives as being antithetical to the notion that racial equality means all races are treated the same.
Both challenges were brought by a group called Students for Fair Admissions, led by the conservative activist Ed Blum.
"The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled," he said in a statement.
The legal debate that led to the latest ruling was left unresolved by a fractured 1978 Supreme Court ruling that prohibited racial quotas but left the door open to some consideration of race. That then led to the 2003 Grutter ruling, which again reluctantly allowed some affirmative action programs.
In 2016, the last time the Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action, the justices narrowly upheld the admissions policy at the University of Texas at Austin on a 4-3 vote, with conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy, who has since retired, casting the deciding vote.
The court shifted to the right after President Donald Trump appointed three conservative justices. President Joe Biden’s appointment of Jackson did not change the ideological balance of the court, as she replaced fellow liberal Justice Stephen Breyer. Because Jackson served on Harvard’s Board of Overseersduring the litigation,she stepped aside from the Harvard case and participated only in the North Carolina dispute.
Blum’s group argued that any consideration of race in college admissions is unlawful under both Title VI and the Constitution. It said that the UNC admissions policy discriminates against white and Asian applicants and that the Harvard policy discriminates against Asians. In both cases, lower courts ruled in favor of the universities.
In defending their policies, the universities and their supporters — including the Biden administration, civil rights groups, businesses and former military leaders — argued that excluding someone based on race is completely different from seeking diversity on campus. The universities say race is just one factor that is considered as part of broad individualized analysis of each applicant.
UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewiczsaid the university "remains firmly committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and continues to make an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond."
Harvard leaders issued a statement reaffirming their commitment to "the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives and lived experiences."
Harvard will now "determine how to preserve, consistent with the court's new precedent, our essential values," they added.
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education
education
Education is the transmission of knowledge, skills, and character traits. There are many debates about its precise definition, for example, about which aims it tries to achieve. A further issue is whether part of the meaning of education is that the change in the student is an improvement.
to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.The court's conservative majority overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North ...
In the context of higher education, affirmative action typically refers to admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on campus.
How Affirmative Action Affects College Admissions. The use of racial quotas, in which colleges reserve a designated number of spots for students based on their race and admit them exclusively on that basis, was ruled unconstitutional in the 1978 Supreme Court case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke.
We find substantial declines in levels of affirmative action practiced by highly selective colleges in the states affected by bans and the Hopwood and Johnson rulings, and no evidence of declines outside these states (and thus modest and generally insignificant declines nationwide).
The Supreme Court on Tuesday upheld a Michigan law banning the use of racial criteria in college admissions, a key decision in an unfolding legal and political battle nationally over affirmative action.
The Supreme Court's landmark decision on Thursday to gut affirmative action has made it unlawful for colleges to take race into consideration as a specific factor in admissions.
Outreach campaigns, targeted recruitment, employee and management development, and employee support programs are examples of affirmative action in employment.
Enrollment at the University of Michigan Law School and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law among Black, Hispanic and Native American first-year students plummeted after both states banned affirmative action in public university admissions.
For the first time, private colleges in California and around the country will be barred from considering race in admissions decisions, just as the state's public schools have been since 1996.
Harvard, by contrast, became the model for affirmative action programs in 1978 when the Supreme Court cited the school's consideration of race as similar to other traits the school relied on to ensure a diverse student body.
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, declaring race cannot be a factor and forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
In terms of decisions that changed the landscape of American life, Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka (1954) tops the list. Brown famously overturned the 1896 case of Plessy v.Ferguson, in which a very different Supreme Court blessed the segregationist doctrine of “separate but equal” as constitutional.
On June 26, 1978, the Supreme Court handed down the first major affirmative action decision concerning university admissions, involving a 38-year-old white engineer Allan Bakke's petition to enter a California medical school.
California banned affirmative action in 1996 under Republican Gov. Pete Wilson during an anti-immigration wave in California that included a voter-approved law that would have denied health care, education and other services to people living in the U.S. without authorization.
What has caused the Supreme Court to weaken affirmative action laws? The Court decided that affirmative action policies must survive strict scrutiny. Some affirmative action policies violated the Fourteenth Amendment.
9 states already ban race-based affirmative action
Nine states already ban race-based affirmative action policies for public colleges: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.
Affirmative action refers to a policy aimed at increasing workplace and educational opportunities for people who are underrepresented in various areas of our society. It focuses on demographics with historically low representation in leadership and professional roles.
The Supreme Court just finished issuing its biggest decisions of the term. The justices this week killed President Joe Biden's $400 billion plan to cancel or reduce federal student loan debts, ended affirmative action in higher education and issued a major decision that impacts gay rights.
Perhaps the most tragic side effect of affirmative action is that very significant achievements of minority students can become compromised. It is often not possible to tell whether a given student genuinely deserved admission to Stanford, or whether he is there by virtue of fitting into some sort of diversity matrix.
Applicants, employees and former employees are protected from employment discrimination based on race, color, religion, sex (including pregnancy, sexual orientation, or gender identity), national origin, age (40 or older), disability and genetic information (including family medical history).
Since the 1970s, various states have moved to prohibit the consideration of race in admissions, with some cases reaching the Supreme Court. Although the court has historically upheld affirmative action policies in college admissions, there have been times where it ruled to limited them.
Title IX is a federal law that was passed in 1972 to ensure that male and female students and employees in educational settings are treated equally and fairly. It protects against discrimination based on sex (including sexual harassment).
Under the United States Constitution, parents have a fundamental right to direct the education of their children. In 1925 the Supreme Court recognized that "liberty," protected by the Fourteenth Amendment, includes the right to choose a private education.
Because private universities are not government entities, they are not required to uphold First Amendment protections in the same manner as public universities. In other words, private institutions may impose stricter limitations on free speech. Still, most adhere to free speech principles and support academic freedom.
The UCLA policy on equal employment opportunity and affirmative action is communicated to the campus and the public through various institutional publications.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard in a major victory for conservative activists, ending the systematic consideration of race in the admissions process.
1961 – President John F. Kennedy's Executive Order (E.O.) 10925 used affirmative action for the first time by instructing federal contractors to take "affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin,” Established the Committee on Equal ...
Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina Supreme Court Justice and a vocal proponent of race-based affirmative action, wrote the dissenting opinion joined by the court's two other liberal justices.
The Supreme Court's ban on affirmative action means colleges will struggle to meet goals of diversity and equal opportunity. After extensive deliberation, the Supreme Court has delivered a landmark ruling that effectively prohibits the use of race-based affirmative action in college admissions.
Grutter v.Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case in which the United States Supreme Court upheld the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Michigan Law School.
In sum, racial quotas are always unconstitutional, but affirmative action programs may be constitutional if race is considered as one of many admission factors and used to remedy past findings of discrimination and to promote diversity.
A report that the Center for American Progress published yesterday shows that teachers expect students of color and low-income students to graduate college at lower rates than white students.
The harms of affirmative action are clear. Academic mismatch perpetuates low grades and high dropout rates for minority students who need a racial preference to gain admission. Basing admissions on race rather than merit also contributes to the dearth of minorities in STEM fields.
"In addition to dealing with financial insecurity, only 46% of college grads surveyed say they currently work in their field of study. 29% report working in a different field, while 16% of those under age 54 (and therefore not likely retired) say they are currently unemployed.
When the Supreme Court rules on a constitutional issue, that judgment is virtually final; its decisions can be altered only by the rarely used procedure of constitutional amendment or by a new ruling of the Court.
Court can declare a law unconstitutional; allowing Congress to override Supreme Court decisions; imposing new judicial ethics rules for Justices; and expanding transparency through means such as allowing video recordings of Supreme Court proceedings.
The Supreme Court ruled Thursday that colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis in admissions — a landmark decision that overturns long-standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students in higher education.
Bakke was ordered admitted to UC Davis Medical School, and the school's practice of reserving 16 seats for minority students was struck down. Judgment of the Supreme Court of California reversed insofar as it forbade the university from taking race into account in admissions.
WHAT IS AFFIRMATIVE ACTION? In the context of higher education, affirmative action typically refers to admissions policies aimed at increasing the number of Black, Hispanic and other minority students on campus.
The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis for granting admission, a landmark decision overturning long-standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students in higher education.
This is because, for the first time, the proposed Amendment added the word "male" into the US Constitution. Section 2, which dealt explicitly with voting rights, used the term "male." And women's rights advocates, especially those who were promoting woman suffrage or the granting of the vote to women, were outraged.
Due to judicial and executive inaction, the amendment was not interpreted as anything more than a reiteration of the Thirteenth Amendment's declaration of emancipation for slaves, and it did not guarantee African Americans any civil rights as citizens of the United States.
[The Fourteenth Amendment] was designed to assure to the colored race the enjoyment of all the civil rights that under the law are enjoyed by white persons, and to give to that race the protection of the general government in that enjoyment, whenever it should be denied by the States.
The purpose of affirmative action is to ensure equal employment opportunities for applicants and employees. It is based on the premise that, absent discrimination, over time a contractor's workforce generally will reflect the demographics of the qualified available workforce in the relevant job market.
In the 1960s and 1970s, colleges and graduate schools began developing affirmative action policies to expand access to disadvantaged and underrepresented segments of society, including racial minorities.
Enrollment at the University of Michigan Law School and the University of California, Berkeley School of Law among Black, Hispanic and Native American first-year students plummeted after both states banned affirmative action in public university admissions.
What factors led the Supreme Court to weaken affirmative action laws? -The Court ruled that particular affirmative action policies violate the Fourteenth Amendment. -The Court decided that affirmative action policies must survive strict scrutiny.
Executive Order 10925 gave federal contracting agencies authority to institute procedures against federal contractors who violated their EEO obligations—including contract cancellation, debarment from future contracts and other sanctions.
Supreme Court justices who voted against affirmative action
Roberts' opinion was joined by Thomas, Samuel Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. The chief justice wrote that Harvard and UNC's race-based admission guidelines "cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause."
The affirmative action cases were brought by conservative activist Edward Blum, who also was behind an earlier affirmative action challenge against the University of Texas as well as the case that led the court in 2013 to end use of a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.
Affirmative Action is designed to end the discrimination of people based on race and nationality. It is a way to give non-whites an opportunity to have decent jobs and add to the diversity at any work place.
Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), is a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States which involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities can reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution.
Introduction: My name is Lidia Grady, I am a thankful, fine, glamorous, lucky, lively, pleasant, shiny person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.
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