Ending a practice widely in use since the civil rights days of the 1960s, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-based admission standards for colleges and universities under the rubric of “affirmative action.”
Students for Fair Admissions, an activist group representing students, brought cases against both Harvard College and the University of North Carolina. The group filed a suit against Harvard in 2014, accusing the institution of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.”
The lawsuit against Harvard further argued that the institution’s practices unfairly disadvantaged Asian American students and lacked the implementation of race-neutral measures. In the University of North Carolina case, the key concern was whether the university could reject non-race-based practices without demonstrating that such measures would undermine academic excellence or have adverse effects on the benefits derived from campus diversity.
Supreme Court Justices Clarence Thomas and Sonia Sotomayor read their conflicting opinions on affirmative action from the bench, which is a rarity.
“Today, and despite a lengthy interregnum, the Constitution prevails,” Thomas declared in his opinion.
In addition to applauding the majority opinion that overturned decades of the U.S. judicial system permitting colleges and universities to make admissions decisions based on race, the 75-year-old justice also provided his own unique perspective on the matter, Fox News reported.
“I write separately to offer an originalist defense of the colorblind Constitution; to explain further the flaws of the Court’s Grutter jurisprudence; to clarify that all forms of discrimination based on race–including so-called affirmative action–are prohibited under the Constitution; and to emphasize the pernicious effects of all such discrimination.”
Sotomayor noted: “The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality. “The Court long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind.”
“Today, this Court stands in the way and 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. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter,” she added.
