According to the Wisconsin State Journal, today the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions.
Admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation’s oldest private and public colleges, respectively, were overturned by the court’s conservative majority.
In the North Carolina case, the vote was 6–3, and the Harvard case vote was 6–2. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black female justice, sat out the Harvard case as she had been a member of an advisory governing board there.
In the past 20 years, the Supreme Court has twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs. The most recent instance occurred in 2016, but that was before the three appointees of former President Donald Trump joined the court.
The court is conservative-dominated but the most diverse court ever, with four women, two Black people, and a Latina among its nine justices.
All six conservative justices expressed doubts about the practice in late October.
Conservative activist Edward Blum brought the affirmative action cases. Blum formed Students for Fair Admissions, filing lawsuits against both schools in 2014 and arguing that the Constitution forbids the use of race in college admissions. It called for overturning earlier Supreme Court decisions that said otherwise.
Federal data shows that the number of nonwhite students at the eight Ivy League universities increased 55% from 2010–2021. Ending affirmative action in higher education in California, Michigan, Washington state, and elsewhere led to a dramatic drop in minority enrollment in those states’ leading public universities. They are among nine states that already prohibit consideration of race in admissions.
