Staff Writer
The use of race and ethnicity in university admissions was outlawed on Thursday by the US Supreme Court, striking a severe blow to a long-standing practice that increased educational chances for African-Americans and other minorities.
Chief Justice John Roberts stated as much in the majority judgment, “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”
The decision, which came after years of conservative hostility to “affirmative action” practices that have sought diversity in school admissions and business and government hiring, was split 6 to 3 along conservative-liberal lines by the justices.
The court ruled that institutions were permitted to take an applicant’s personal experience into account when evaluating their application, such as whether they experienced racism growing up.
But according to Roberts, making a decision solely based on a candidate’s race—White, Black, or otherwise—is prejudice in and of itself.
“Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” he declared.
The University of North Carolina (UNC) and prestigious Harvard University were sued for their admissions practices, and the court sided with the activist group Students for Fair Admissions, who brought the case.
The group said that Asian Americans applying to the two colleges who were equally competent or more qualified were discriminated against because of their race.
In order to ensure a varied student body and representation of minorities, Harvard and UNC, along with a number of other highly selective US universities, take an applicant’s race or ethnicity into consideration.
These affirmative action programs emerged from the Civil Rights Movement in the 1960s with the intention of addressing the history of discrimination against African Americans in higher education.
Conservatives who have maintained that affirmative action is fundamentally unfair celebrated Thursday’s decision as a victory.
Others claim that the strategy is no longer necessary because Blacks and other minorities now have significantly better educational chances.
One year after the court overturned the famous “Roe v. Wade” decision, which guaranteed a woman’s right to an abortion, the judgment was a severe loss for progressives.
Almost immediately after abortion rights were no longer protected by the federal government, 50 percent of the states either outlawed or severely restricted the procedure.
The affirmative action decision may result in many states and institutions ceasing their initiatives to provide underprivileged minorities preferential treatment during the competitive college admissions process.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who led the minority, claimed that the judgment “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”
She added, “In so holding, the Court… firmly establishes a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society.”
