BREAKING: Supreme Court Rules On The Future Of Affirmative Action

On Thursday, the Supreme Court of the United States issued their ruling on affirmative action with the court concluding in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College that the university carried out "unconstitutional racial balancing."

In a 6-3 decision, the Supreme Court found that it was unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions thus stricking a blow to the way that college admissions have functioned for decades. The decision fell on ideological lines with the six conservative justices voting in favor of Students for Fair Admissions while the three liberal justices voted against.

Chief Justice John Roberts authored the opinion of the court and Justice Clarence Thomas and Justice Brett Kavanaugh wrote concurring opinions.

Justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan disagreed from the six conservative justices in a dissent authored by Justice Jackson. Sotomayor also wrote a dissenting opinion.

Before the court was Harvard College as well as the University of North Carolina against Students for Fair Admissions, an organization dedicated to the end of affirmative action.

"For the reasons provided above, the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause," the court wrote. "Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, 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."

"[T]he student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race," the court explained in its conclusion. "Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."

The full opinion can be read here.

This is a developing story and will be updated accordingly.
 

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