Read Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Scathing Dissent to ‘Let-Them-Eat-Cake Obliviousness’ at End of Affirmative Action

The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that race-based college admissions at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unlawful, ending affirmative action programs at colleges across the United States. And in her dissent, Supreme Court justice Ketanji Brown Jackson pulled no punches as she called the ruling “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness.”

The vote was 6 to 3, with the Supreme Court’s liberal members voting against the decision, and Jackson’s lengthy dissent quickly caught traction on social media.

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” the dissent reads in part. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life. And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the Court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.”

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The dissent continues: “No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal racelinked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better. The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism. But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us. And, ultimately, ignoring race just makes it matter more.”

Jackson, who was appointed to the Court by President Joe Biden in 2022, called for leveling the playing field against systemic racism with programs like those in place at Harvard and UNC.

“The only way out of this morass — for all of us — is to stare at racial disparity unblinkingly, and then do what evidence and experts tell us is required to level the playing field and march forward together, collectively striving to achieve true equality for all Americans. It is no small irony that the judgment the majority hands down today will forestall the end of race-based disparities in this country, making the colorblind world the majority wistfully touts much more difficult to accomplish.”

In conclusion, Jackson said the decision is a “tragedy.”

“The Court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom (a particularly awkward place to land, in light of the history the majority opts to ignore). It would be deeply unfortunate if the Equal Protection Clause actually demanded this perverse, ahistorical, and counterproductive outcome. To impose this result in that Clause’s name when it requires no such thing, and to thereby obstruct our collective progress toward the full realization of the Clause’s promise, is truly a tragedy for us all.”

Supreme Court Justice Sonia Sotomayor also wrote a dissent, saying the decision rolls back decades of progress.

“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits,” Sotomayor’s dissent reads in part. “In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.”

Read Jackson and Sotomayor’s complete dissents here.

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