Supreme Court Rejects Affirmative Action at U.S. Colleges: Latest News
Thursday’s decision by the Supreme Court’s conservative supermajority to abolish the race-sensitive admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina has brought renewed focus to the court’s rightward shift in recent years.
Like abortion — the subject of a similarly divided ruling last year that overturned the constitutional right to abortion — the Affirmative Action underscores the deep divide between conservative and liberal judges.
The strongly worded opinions and dissenting opinions released Thursday were not the first time members of the court had voiced their views. Here is a sample:
Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.
The chief justice, who delivered the majority opinion in Thursday’s ruling, has long opposed racially motivated admissions.
In his view, the 14th Amendment’s equality clause should help create a color-blind society, not serve to support racial preferences.
In Parents Involved v. In Seattle in 2007, in which the court rejected a Seattle plan to desegregate schools, he famously wrote, “The way to stop racial discrimination is to end racial discrimination.”
Judge Clarence Thomas
Judge Thomas is perhaps the court’s harshest critic of affirmative action. In his speeches, his memoirs, and his dissenting opinions on previous cases, he has always taken the position that racial licensing violates the 14th Amendment — and that it does more harm than good to students from poor backgrounds.
In 2003, when the court heard cases involving two white students who challenged the policy after being denied admission to the University of Michigan, the majority concluded that the university did not determine an applicant’s race ” closely matched” can take into account. But Judge Thomas wrote in a dissent that universities seek such diversity in admissions only “to reach their aesthetic student body.”
In 2013, Judge Thomas restated his view that the court should reject affirmative action, writing a dissent when the court reiterated policy in Fisher v. University of Texas. He wrote that the Equal Treatment Clause prohibited the use of race in college admissions.
Judge Thomas has written that his views on affirmative action are based on personal experience. When he attended Yale Law School, he said other students viewed him as a token affirmative action student, and he said he believed potential employers viewed him with skepticism as well.
Judge Sonia Sotomayor
Like Judge Thomas, Judge Sotomayor came from a humble background. However, she takes the opposite view on race-conscious admissions.
In her memoir, My Beloved World, Judge Sotomayor firmly defended affirmative action and credited the policy with allowing her to attend Princeton University and Yale Law School.
In a panel with two other judges in the early 1990s, Judge Sotomayor praised politics for opening a way for her.
“I’m a product of affirmative action,” she said.
Judge Samuel A. Alito Jr.
Judge Alito has made no secret that he despises racial admissions. In 2016, in an unusual move, he read his dissent from the bench in the Fisher v. University of Texas case.
“This is a crazy affirmative action,” Judge Alito said.
He wrote: “The issue is whether university leaders can justify systematic racial discrimination simply by claiming that such discrimination is necessary to achieve ‘the educational benefits of diversity,’ without explaining – let alone demonstrating – why the discrimination is necessary or how it is done.” The discriminatory plan is well designed to serve its objectives.”
During the October hearing, Judge Alito reiterated his criticism of the policy, calling the college admissions “a zero-sum game.”
“Suppose you have a race,” he said. If one of the two runners is allowed to start five meters closer to the finish line, he said: “If you don’t have that plus factor, you’re at a disadvantage, right?”
Judge Elena Kagan
Judge Kagan has withdrawn from two previous affirmative action cases because she worked on them as US Attorney General. After one of the cases in which a racially sensitive admissions program at the University of Texas was upheld by a 4-3 vote, Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg said in an interview that she was confident Justice Kagan would have voted with the majority.
“If Judge Kagan had been there, it would have been 5 to 3,” Judge Ginsburg said.
There were indications of their views before Thursday. While serving as an advisor to President Bill Clinton, she advocated a legal strategy aimed at avoiding a sweeping Supreme Court ruling against affirmative action.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson
Judge Jackson only joined the court last June, but during last year’s wrangling in another case — on the Voting Rights Act — she offered a glimpse of where she might be.
After a lawyer indicated that there was a tension between the law’s goal of protecting minority voting rights and the 14th Amendment’s equality clause, Justice Jackson indicated that she did not believe there was a conflict – a foretaste of an argument she also made in the positive action cases.
After analyzing the history and traditions of the Constitution, Justice Jackson said she realized that “the drafters themselves adopted the equal protections clause, the 14th Amendment, the 15th Amendment, in a racially aware manner.”
She continued, “I don’t think the historical record shows that the founders believed racial neutrality or racial blindness was required.”