The Supreme Court recently announced a landmark decision ruling that the admissions programs of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina (UNC) violate the guarantees of equal protection under the Fourteenth Amendment. The Court's decision puts an end to what has been described as pernicious and morally repugnant racial discrimination in college admissions.
"The Supreme Court has finally upheld the guarantees of equal protection in the 14th Amendment and end the pernicious, morally repugnant racial discrimination practiced by Harvard and UNC," Hans von Spakovsky, Heritage Foundation senior legal fellow, said in a June 30 Twitter post.
The case, which was argued in October 2022 and decided on June 29, centered on the admissions processes used by Harvard and UNC, both of which employ highly selective criteria that include consideration of race; a Supreme Court syllabus of the case said. Harvard utilizes a numerical scoring system that incorporates race, while UNC readers take race into account when making recommendations.
"For far too long, racial preferences benefiting certain students have been abused in college admissions to racially discriminate against other students and deny them equal educational opportunities," Heritage Foundation senior legal fellows von Spakovsky and Sarah Parshall Perry, along with senior fellow Mike Gonzalez, said in an official joint statement. "Today's decision by the Supreme Court helps reverse decades of repugnant discriminatory conduct exercised by administrators who punished or rewarded students based not on their credentials, qualifications, and hard work but on the color of their skin. This is the biggest win for colorblind education since Brown v. Board of Education."
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit organization, filed lawsuits against both universities, arguing that their race-based admissions programs violated the Civil Rights Act and the Equal Protection Clause. Lower courts had previously found the programs permissible, but the Supreme Court granted certiorari in the Harvard case and before judgment in the UNC case.
The Court's ruling, based on strict scrutiny, concluded that the admissions programs of both Harvard and UNC failed to meet the requirements, the syllabus said. The programs were found to lack clear goals and meaningful connections between means and goals, and they involved stereotyping and negative use of race. Additionally, the Court emphasized the need for a logical endpoint to race-based admissions programs and criticized the practice of prioritizing race over individual achievements and experiences.
While the Court invalidated the admissions programs, it clarified that universities could still consider an applicant's discussion of how race impacted their life if tied to unique abilities or qualities.
"Woke university administrators are now on notice that racial discrimination and the biased admissions systems they implemented no longer have a place in America," the joint statement said.
