UC's Karabel notes that there are already employment lawsuits pending, and "by the logic of this decision, I would think that racial discrimination, as defined by the court, would be banned in employment as well." "We're going to be fighting about this for the next 30 years," said Harvard law professor Randall Kennedy.Įdward Blum, who for decades has been a one-man crusader against everything from the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act to affirmative action in higher education, plans to challenge some corporate boards on racial preference grounds, and he says he knows of other plans to challenge minority scholarship and fellowship programs. Ultimately, effects will be felt in every aspect of the nation's economic, educational, and social life-from the Rooney rule that requires a minority applicant be considered in all NFL coach hiring decisions to employment and promotion decisions, DEI programs in schools and workplaces, and much more. Law Read the Supreme Court decision reversing decades of precedent on affirmative action As Roberts put it, "Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicants discussion of how race affected his or her life." Nor did the court address the tactic of clustering minority students in classes. The court did not entirely close the door to racial considerations in college admissions. Now every school will be in that situation, or so it may seem. Indeed, the situation got so bad, she says, that she had to go to the president of the state university system to get permission to place clusters of African American students in classes, instead of "sprinkling them around," leaving minority students alone to speak their mind when subjects of race were discussed. There is a kind of comfort in numbers, and it was very difficult for a very long time to recruit under those conditions." "There was an immediate drop off in the number of African American students that was both a confluence of the change in the admissions policy, but also African American students not wanting to go under those conditions," she said. NYU law professor Melissa Murray was the acting dean at the University of California Berkeley in 20 when a state referendum barred the use of race in college admission decisions. Indeed, the reality is that in those places where affirmative action has been eliminated, there has been a severe drop in minority, and particularly, African American, admissions. "It feels tragic," said Columbia University President Bollinger, who has for 30 years been a leading proponent of affirmative action programs. Roberts, for his part, pointed to the court's 2003 decision reaffirming the constitutionality of affirmative action programs, noting that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court at the time, had suggested that there would have to be an end at some future point. all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law." "While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold our enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles that. Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution."Īs he has done before, Thomas, the second black justice appointed to the court, reiterated his long-held view that affirmative action imposes a stigma on minorities. Thursday's decision, he wrote, "sees the universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences.
Law Here are the major Supreme Court decisions we're still waiting for this term "Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice." "Many universities have for too ncluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin," he wrote. It ends the ability of colleges and universities - public and private - to do what most say they still need to do: consider race as one of many factors in deciding which of the qualified applicants is to be admitted.Ĭhief Justice John Roberts, a longtime critic of affirmative action programs, wrote the decision for the court majority, saying that the nation's colleges and universities must use colorblind criteria in admissions. The decision reverses decades of precedent upheld over the years by narrow Supreme Court majorities that included Republican-appointed justices. In a decision divided along ideological lines, the six-justice conservative supermajority invalidated admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country.
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