SCOTUS Overturns Affirmative Action

What's the story?

• The Supreme Court issued a ruling on Thursday overturning the use of affirmative action in college admissions. 
• Affirmative action is a practice that allows universities to consider an applicant's race, ethnicity, and background, along with academic performance and extracurriculars. 
• The court ruled 6-3, saying the practice "violate[s] the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment."

The case

• The Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard case challenged the ability of educational institutions to use race as a factor in admission decisions. This ruling overturned Grutter v. Bollinger of 2003, which upheld the use of the affirmative action policy, allowing race-conscious admissions to promote student diversity. 
• The conservative nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) appealed a lower court decision to maintain affirmative action at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (UNC). The group argued in front of the Supreme Court that the admissions standards at Harvard discriminate against Asian American applicants, and UNC discriminates against white and Asian American applicants. SFFA claimed that affirmative action violates Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibits exclusion from participation in federally assisted programs based on race.
• The universities maintained that race is just one factor in their admissions process, and affirmative action allows for a higher representation of students of color on campus.

What they're saying

• Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the court opinion:

"[The universities] have failed to present an exceedingly persuasive justification for separating students on the basis of race that is measurable and concrete enough to permit judicial review, as the Equal Protection Clause requires."

• Justice Sonia Sotomayor, one of the dissenting voices next to Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, said:

"The result of today's decision is that a person's skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person's individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection." 

• Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y.) tweeted: 

If SCOTUS was serious about their ludicrous “colorblindness” claims, they would have abolished legacy admissions, aka affirmative action for the privileged.

70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. SCOTUS didn’t touch that - which would have impacted them and their patrons.

— Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (@AOC) June 29, 2023

What do you think about the overturning of affirmative action?

-Jamie Epstein