In a landmark court ruling released today, the U.S. Supreme Court effectively ended the use of affirmative action in college admissions. {237-page ruling here}
By a vote of 6-3 (UNC) and 6-2 (Harvard) the court ruled the admissions programs used by the University of North Carolina and Harvard College violate the Constitution’s equal protection clause barring racial discrimination by government entities.
Chief Justice John Roberts writing the opinion of the majority said that for too long universities have “concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a woman of notoriously activist disposition defined by her self-image and race, sat out the Harvard case because she had been a member of an advisory governing board who constructed the rules the Supreme Court now determined were unlawful.
Amy Howe – […] Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts explained that college admissions programs can consider race merely to allow an applicant to explain how their race influenced their character in a way that would have a concrete effect on the university. But a student “must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote. The majority effectively, though not explicitly, overruled its 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court upheld the University of Michigan Law School’s consideration of race “as one factor among many, in an effort to assemble a student body that is diverse in ways broader than race.”
