The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled affirmative action programs at two universities to be unconstitutional, thus ending race-based admissions at publicly funded schools.
Affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard were ruled to be in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution. The vote in the UNC case was 6-3 and the Harvard vote was 6-2, with Justice Ketanji Brown-Jackson being recused.
The vote was split along ideological lines, with the six conservative justices voting against a program that evaluated college candidates based on race.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion for the Court.
“The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual – not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Brown-Jackson wrote a dissenting opinion, wherein she accused the six conservative justices of having a “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness.”
“[D]eeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life,” Brown-Jackson wrote. “And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”
Justice Clarence Thomas, who was born in poverty in the South during the Jim Crow era, wrote an opinion concurring with Roberts and included specific critiques of Brown-Jackson’s dissent.
“Justice Jackson’s race-infused world view falls flat at each step,” Thomas wrote. “Individuals are the sum of their unique experiences, challenges, and accomplishments. What matters is not the barriers they face, but how they choose to confront them. And their race is not to blame for everything – good or bad – that happens in their lives.”
Thomas wrote that affirmative action programs are “rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix” among the student body.
“Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution and our Nation’s equality ideal,” he wrote.
(The full ruling can be read online here.)
The ruling could potentially impact DEI policies in workplaces, according to RedBalloon CEO Andrew Crapuchettes.
“This is a huge statement by the Supreme Court, and one that’s sure to impact not just college admissions, but the broader workplace culture in America,” said Crapuchettes. “The ruling basically labels race-based DEI policies unconstitutional, which means there’s a hurricane of constitutional reckoning coming to America’s woke workplaces.”
