June 29,2023

In a blow to the last vestige of government sanctioned discrimination, the Supreme Court ruled that the use of race in college admissions is unlawful as it violates the 14th Amendment's guarantee of equal protection. In the two cases, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University, the author of the opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote, "For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today." He went on to conclude, "In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race."  

In a previous Supreme Court ruling, Grutter v. Bollinger 2003, the court indicated that affirmative action will eventually have to end, yet it has continued unabated. Both the government and respondents made it clear that the use of race in admissions will never end if their position was to prevail "Respondents and the Government first suggest that respondents’ race-based admissions programs will end when, in their absence, there is “meaningful representation and meaningful diversity” on college campuses." Using "meaningful" as a standard of measurement is further proof of the arbitrary nature of affirmative action. Both schools even argued that they alone should be able to decide when student body diversity is achieved after holding periodic reviews of their efforts, however that was a bridge to far as noted by Justice Thomas, "Universities’ self-proclaimed righteousness does not afford them license to discriminate on the basis of race." Thus there is no doubt as to their intention to continue to discriminate for all perpetuity in the name of diversity. The respondents then tried to come up with all sorts of reasons they felt were compelling to justify their programs, "training future leaders in the public and private sectors’” to “‘enhancing appreciation, respect, and empathy,’” with references to “‘better educating [their] students through diversity’” in between."  Fortunately, the court rejected their arguments as "vague and immeasurable to suffice". 

In a strong rebuke to the dissenting justices, Chief Justice Roberts wrote, "Most troubling of all is what the dissent must make these omissions to defend: a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin. While the dissent would certainly not permit university programs that discriminated against black and Latino applicants, it is perfectly willing to let the programs here continue. In its view, this Court is supposed to tell state actors when they have picked the right races to benefit. Separate but equal is “inherently unequal,” said Brown". Justice Thomas pulled no punches, "Justice Jackson then builds from her faulty premise to call for action, arguing that courts should defer to “experts” and allow institutions to discriminate on the basis of race. Make no mistake: Her dissent is not a vanguard of the innocent and helpless. It is instead a call to empower privileged elites, who will “tell us [what] is required to level the playing field” among castes and classifications that they alone can divine. Then, after siloing us all into racial castes and pitting those castes against each other, the dissent somehow believes that we will be able—at some undefined point—to “march forward together” into some utopian vision. Social movements that invoke these sorts of rallying cries, historically, have ended disastrously."

Justice Clarence Thomas went on to provide some of the most compelling arguments against Affirmative Action, "Arguments for the benefits of race-based solutions have proved pernicious in segregationist circles. Segregated universities once argued that race-based discrimination was needed “to preserve harmony and peace and at the same time furnish equal education to both groups.”  The key element in the decision is that the guiding principal of equal protection cannot be infringed, "With the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the people of our Nation proclaimed that the law may not sort citizens based on race. It is this principle that the Framers of the Fourteenth Amendment adopted in the wake of the Civil War to fulfill the promise of equality under the law. And it is this principle that has guaranteed a Nation of equal citizens the privileges or immunities of citizenship and the equal protection of the laws."   

This decision reaffirms the principal of equality for all Americans without regard to race. It also brings education law in line with employment as to racial discrimination. Large corporations should take notice. If their employment policies rely on the principal of equity versus equal opportunity, they need to come into compliance or face legal jeopardy. Ending state sanctioned discrimination promotes equal opportunity for all. Our constitution has prevailed.