The U.S. Supreme Court today dealt a major blow to college admissions offices that discriminate against Asian and white applicants.
The ruling comes after a lengthy legal battle initiated by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina in November 2014, accusing both institutions of engaging in unfair and illegal racial discrimination in their admissions policies.
The case presented by SFFA challenged the use of racial or ethnic classifications and preferences in admissions and sought to overturn the Supreme Court’s previous ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which allowed for the limited use of such policies. SFFA argued that all institutions of higher education should be prohibited from using race as a factor in admissions decisions.
Specifically, SFFA contended that Harvard University violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian-American applicants and engaging in racial balancing. The organization accused Harvard of overemphasizing race and failing to consider workable race-neutral alternatives. One of the most controversial allegations was that Harvard’s admissions office demerited Asian-American applicants’ personalities, claiming they lacked leadership, confidence, and likability.
Similarly, SFFA accused the University of North Carolina of violating the U.S. Constitution and Title VI by rejecting a race-neutral alternative to racial admissions preferences without demonstrating that such an alternative would significantly impact academic quality or overall student-body diversity. According to SFFA, UNC rejected any race-neutral alternatives, even if they could enhance diversity.
In its ruling, the Supreme Court acknowledged that its previous decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, handed down in June 2003, had been flawed.
The court today stated that it had permitted race-based admissions only within narrow restrictions, requiring university programs to adhere to strict scrutiny and prohibiting the use of race as a stereotype or negative. The court emphasized that such policies should have an expiration date, signaling that at some point, they must come to an end.
The implications of this ruling are expected to reverberate throughout the education system, impacting college admissions practices across the country. While affirmative action policies aimed at promoting diversity on campuses have long been a contentious issue, this Supreme Court ruling represents a significant shift towards a more race-neutral approach to college admissions.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh said in his concurring opinion, “In light of the Constitution’s text, history, and precedent, the Court’s decision today appropriately respects and abides by Grutter’s explicit temporal limit on the use of race-based affirmative action in higher education.”
In the ruling, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan, and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented. Sotomayor’s dissent said, in part, that the decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits.”
This story is breaking and will be updated.
Just in time to get Garland out of the spotlight.
Overdue. One of the biggest pillars of state sponsored racism is over.
Cue hysteria on a massive scale in 3…2..1
Will be it be calls to pack the court? Ultra MAGA? White “supremacy”?
Sotomayor is wrong. One party’s idea of progress and momentum, is not your job at SCOTUS.
Marine Mammal Protection Act is next…
Good. I always wondered why race was even a box to check on admissions applications.
This is pretty huge. No longer can anybody get a sought after scholarship or admission based solely on the color of their skin. People of color wanted to unlevel the playing field based solely on the color of their skin. This goes a long way to creating equal justice for everyone. After all, isn’t that what the NAACP wants?
They will find a way around this ruling. We need true higher education universities who want to teach not control. If they want people of color over achievement then we need a school for non color people who want a higher education to better themselves.
Thank you President Trump
Then they should be instructed to remove the race check mark during the application process.
DUH!
That was an obvious decision that was only several decades overdue.
Now if we could just do the same with the native corporations and their hiring practices
Its a dismal testament to our judicial system when it takes 50+ years for it to conclude an institutional practice affecting millions of people is unconstitutional.
Those F-ing white supremacists…
Oh…. this was brought by Asians?
Whoops… nevermind.
I don’t understand this recent penchant for referring to Orientals as “Asians”, as if the Orient constitutes the entirety of the continent of Asia. It just makes the speaker appear geographically and ethnically ignorant. Russians and Israelis and Turks and Indians and Arabs are all Asians too, you know.
Same as calling everyone brown Hispanic, or “Latinx” (whatever the heck that is).
Easy stereotyping.
“Latinx”, LOL!
I don’t know if this is how the wokesters intend it to be pronounced, but when I have had to say that idiotic word, I pronounce it “La-tinks”. I guess the gay Hispanics could be called “La-twinks”.
Jefferson, your comment is based upon pure facts. Furthermore, there is no logical reason why the term “Oriental” should be offensive.
Rolling many corps things back to the US 1776 Republic of the people, by the people and for the people. YAY! Du Jure! Like no one alive has ever seen!
Watching the propaganda channels this morning, I haven’t seen the democrat this mad since the republicans abolished slavery.
Superb ruling by the High Court. Unfortunately, most law schools and universities are so entrenched with AA enrollment and campus hire, that they will take this opinion and toss it in the trash. Then, the barrage of lawsuits will hit the schools by white and Asian students who were rejected for admission. And guess what colors of attorneys the schools will hire to defend themselves from their violations of the 14th Amendment to the Constitution?
Obviously, they’ll have to hire the White lawyers who passed the bar exam on the first try. Anything less, and the schools will be sunk in expensive lawsuits. Anyone notice that Lisa Murkowski, who took the bar exam seven times, is dead silent?
Don’t interrupt her! She’s still reading.
With her lips moving.
The policy is also unfair to students who are admitted to these schools despite not being prepared. I found that despite my good SAT scores, it was very difficult to compete against students that had been preparing and being tutored their whole life. I transferred to a good public university and did well there. It’s also not fair to minorities who excel in top schools, because everyone assumes they were given their degree.
Love Trump or hate him, it’s his SCOTUS picks that made this possible.
Never mind that Justice Thomas made it into Yale Law School because of affirmative action. The irony is pretty humorous.
So out of curiosity I did a little reading. Actually back in 1971 (you were probably not around back then) and then when he graduated in 1974, to my knowledge it was not disclosed by Yale whether or not they admitted him under the affirmative action program. Considering he was a top student and an activist attending anti-Vietnam war rallies, I bet Yale liked him a lot. Even as a young lawyer Justice Thomas spoke out against affirmative action, as he believed it harmed the interests of people of color.
I would like to point out that we as a society and a country have changed dramatically since then.
I was around but only 2 years old. And just to make it clear, I’m not the one who is stating as an authority that he benefitted from Affirmative Action, its Clarence Thomas who is; as he has repeatedly stated so, both in interviews and in his book “My Grandfather’s Son.”
And you are absolutely right, we have changed as a society since then to be sure and why I don’t even necessarily disagree with the SCOTUS decision, its also pretty silly for the court to act like we now live in a colorblind society, when we clearly do not.
No we are not a colorblind society and mankind will never be one, but we are considerably more tolerant towards each other than in 1971. However the law as it applies to all, requires to be colorblind. Affirmative action is a way for universities to manipulate their student population, not based on merit, but on external factors applicants have no control over. A few admissions officers defacto place their bias and beliefs above the accomplishment of the applicants. That’s not okay. The court is speaking to the law not social commentary (unless you are Justice Brown-Jackson, who seems to think that reverse racism is A okay).
Excellent points. Thanks for the reply!
I know, its totally outrageous. Why is Trump banning black people from attending university?
Obvious racism, we all know that he believes higher education should be reserved exclusively for Asians, Whites and Jews.
Justice Thomas and I came up a couple of years and a few miles apart in Georgia. It wasn’t easy for a poor white whose family had no college background to get into college, at least the big state schools, in those days. The entrance minimum for the University of Georgia and its system was an 800 on the SAT back when that was a real score, not todays dumbed down version. That said, 800 wouldn’t get you into UGA; a thousand minimum was a good rule unless you were rich or a legacy.
As I recall from his book he’d been taken in by his grandparents in Savannah, itself fairly liberal compared to other Georgia communities other than Atlanta, sorta’, He went to Savanah’s Catholic private school, Savannah Country Day, which in and of itself pretty much guaranteed a better education than he could have gotten in any black school and all of but the best of the white schools.
Affirmative Action in these early days was different than later incarnations. What it was billed as in those days was making schools and employers take “affirmative action” to recruit qualified minority applicants. The days of dumbed down testing and subjectively evaluated essays for college admission were some years away. I suspect that Thomas was a better than average student from a Southern or rural school.
His liability would have been social. I don’t remember where he went for undergrad, but he went as an English major. A rural white Southern accent makes you have to be twice as smart to be thought half as much of and Thomas’ first language was Gullah, a coastal black dialect that was as much West African as English. My grandfather could speak a pidgin version of it from his time in the timber industry along the Georgia coast and I couldn’t understand a word of it.
I got into UGA on grades and SAT score and it took me one quarter to figure out I didn’t belong there. I was seriously deficient in frat boy money, style, and family history. In The South of those days, and to some degree still only one question matters: “What does your daddy do?” Small farmer or small town merchant are NOT good answers. I transferred out to one of the regional campuses where we white trash that didn’t have a trust fund and a Corvette could be more comfortable.
Being black probably helped him at Yale Law by making him more fashionable. A white rural Southerner with a native accent and no family money would not have had a good time there.
Read that dissenting opinion. The gist of the argument is that presently, racism needs to be available, to combat past racism. How about we just all agree that racism is bad. Can we do that?
If ANYONE is upset that a high percentage of Asians get into some of these schools, they lets find out why that is. What if it’s as simple as Asian parents are more demanding that their children study hard and do well in school? If that’s the case (and it appears that it most certainly is) then why don’t the rest of us make our kids study just as hard, or harder, in order to win a spot at one of those schools? Wouldn’t that make more sense than a court case demanding class acceptance in a school, dictated by race?
Good work, well said.
Also, so many more could get in without legacy admissions.
Maureen, I agree with you. Legacy admissions perpetuate entitlement instead of merit. If as a educational institution you have requirement standards, apply them across the board regardless of who the applicant is.
Maureen speaks with a fork tongue. She means no legacy preference for adult children of her friends and preferred democrat neighbors kids.
Jen. Part of the reason most of us debate here is to get out our views and express our agreement or disagreement with others views. If you find yourself in surprising agreement with someone, it’s not a bad thing. It means that on some points you have common ground. Please don’t cheapen the moment with personal jibes.
Correct. AA was necessary and it’s had its day. But it can’t go on forever. It’s time to kill it.
Hopefully, Legacy is next. And then Donor preference.
The only thing the bridge one designs cares about is that is was designed correctly. It does not care about the color of the engineer’s skin, the amount of money given to the school by his/her Daddy, or where Mom and Dad went to school. Merit, as best as it can be ascertained, should be the primary criteria for admission, for intellect is the only thing that can push out the frontier of human knowledge.
Somebody, quick, call for a defibrillator! I find myself in complete agreement with a post by Whidbey!
See, I’m not as “radical”, “leftist”, or “extremist” as you think. If you knew me, I’d surprise you.
Jackson is a race baiter. Thomas tore her, specifically, a new rear exit.
Paul in Valley, I attended college in the 1970s with Asians. They were Iranians (Persians), Khazars, Kazakhs and Arabs. These “Asian’s” were not as academically exceptional as the Orientals. I think you were referring to Orientals rather than the broader term “Asians.”
No CBMTTek Clarence Thomas was the Klan leader! I heard it on “The View” just this morning.
That’s the only place to find race gender neutral idiocy in America… the beautiful “VIEW”
My sides are still hurting LOLOL
Watch out for that Tim Scott…. They said He is another Klan leader…Grand wizard or Exalted Cyclops or one of those characters that mentored Biden when He was a freshman
So affirmative action is being struck down or is it that now everyone gets affirmative action? …or maybe that those that weren’t affirmative action recipients prior are now no longer not recipients? Is there more to this story that might clear a few aspects of it up? BLM folks are on the edge of their seats.
Now we can stop asking people what sex they identify as too. Then it takes away the reasons from the alphabet team. Way to go!
The best way to end discrimination is to stop discriminating.
Biden said ending racial discrimination was unconstitutional then stumbled off the set of MSNBC during the middle of the interview.
Maybe he had to check on the Russia-Iraq war. Or get his 10% from China.
How much longer will the left keep the illusion this man is 1/3 there?
He also confused the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution.
This man desperately needs help. He’s making Fetterman look coherent.
Both Biden and Fetterman would be great additions to “The Walking Dead”.
And as a bonus, no makeup or acting lessons would be necessary for either one.
In the majority opinion, one of many things cited was the totally unmeasurable nature of Affirmative Action.
How long? How many? How do you know it’s done its job?
Intent or not, this sets up a totally unreachable, undefinable, totally subjective goal.
Cut the budget.
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