Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action, banning colleges from factoring race in admissions
The Supreme Court ruled that private and public colleges and universities may not consider race as a factor in admissions, striking down the landmark case Grutter v Bollinger (2003).
For more than 20 years, colleges and universities have used affirmative action to help establish a diverse group of accepted students which contributes to a more positive education experience.
But now, higher education institutions will no longer be allowed to consider race as a factor in admissions. Instead, students who wish to have their race or culture considered in their application will have to volunteer the information in their personal essay.
The new ruling is a result of the consolidated cases Students for Fair Admissions v University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard College.
The ruling was based on a pair of cases brought forth by the anti-affirmative action organisation Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) which is headed by conservative legal strategist Edward Blum.
Since its founding in 2014, SFFA has filed over 20,000 lawsuits on behalf of students and their parents who claim students did not get accepted to a selective university due to their race.
In Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard College, Mr Blum represented a group of anonymous Asian American students who were rejected from Harvard College and claim it was because of their race.
Though Harvard is a private university, it received federal funding making it subject to Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 which prohibits racial discrimination.
The students argued that Harvard places a quota on the number of Asian American students it accepts every year thus participating in racial discrimination. Harvard denies this.
In Students for Fair Admissions v University of North Carolina, Mr Blum represented white and Asian American students rejected from the Univeristy of North Carolina (UNC) Chapel Hill who alleged that UNC prioritised race in applications and awarded under-represented minority students.
SFFA claims UNC, a publicly-funded university, violated the Title VI of the Civil Rights Act.
More than 60 individuals and organisations filed briefsin support of Harvard College and North Carolina University, emphasising the detrimental effects that ruling in favor of Students for Fair Admissions would have.
The NAACP wrote that SFFA’s “distored understanding of one of the most, if not the most, important case in the constitution canon demeans Black Americans, and it would demean this Court to embrace it.”
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