U.S Supreme Court Outlaws Race-based Admissions In Colleges, Ends Affirmative Action In A 6-3 Judgement

The U.S Supreme Court ruled that the race-based admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.

“The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. 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. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the judgement.

“The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.” Roberts wrote in his ruling.

The decision was 6–3.While the court’s six conservative justices held that affirmative action in the schools’ admissions programmes violated the Constitution’s equal protection clause, the three liberal justices dissented.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the majority “cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.” 

2014 Petition Challenging Race-Based College Admissions On The Ground That It Violates 14th Amendment

A lawsuit was filed in 2014 by Students for Fair Admissions(SFA), a nonprofit membership organization led by the conservative activist Edward Blum, alleging that Harvard and UNC's admissions policies discriminate against Asian-American and White applicants.

The lawsuit asked the Court to recognize that the principles enshrined in 14th Amendment's guarantee of racial neutrality and contended that admission based on affirmative action violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause. The petition also asked the court to uphold the Title VI that forbids federal funding recipients from using race in admissions.

SFA also asked the Supreme Court to overturn a 2003 Supreme Court ruling( in a case called Grutter v. Bollinger) that held that colleges could consider race as one factor in the admissions process. Grutter, decided in 2003, upheld the race-preferential admissions policies of the University of Michigan Law School.

In response, Harvard had argued that getting rid of race considerations in its admissions would result in “steep declines in diversity,” noting taking race out of the equation entirely would reduce enrollment of Black students at the school from 14% to 6% of its student body, and Hispanic enrollment from 14% to 9%.

University of North Carolina claimed that it “considers race flexibly as merely one factor among numerous factors” in its admissions process.

The Biden administration legally backed Harvard and UNC. It filed a legal note stating that many government institutions rely on race-conscious admissions, including the U.S. military academies.