Supreme Court rejects affirmative action at colleges, says schools can’t consider race in admission
Proponents for affirmative action in higher education rally in front of the U.S. Supreme Court before oral arguments in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina on October 31, 2022 in Washington, DC.
Chip Somodevilla | Getty Images
The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the affirmative action admission policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina, which gave weight to a would-be student’s race, are unconstitutional.
The court’s majority opinion, which all six conservative justices joined in, said that both Harvard’s and UNC’s affirmative action programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”
“We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” the opinion said.
The majority said that the universities’ policies violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution’s 14th Amendment.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in a sharp dissent to the opinion, said, “Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress
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