Republicans are celebrating the return to “merit-based” education admissions, while Democrats argue that the Supreme Court’s decision to overturn affirmative action will turn back the clock on racial justice.
Former President Trump, who appointed three conservative judges, welcomed the ruling on his Truth Social page: “This is a great day for America,” he wrote.
“People with extraordinary skills and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded. This is the verdict that everyone was waiting for and hoping for and the result was astonishing. It will also keep us competitive with the rest of the world.
Our greatest minds need to be nurtured and that’s what this wonderful day has brought. We’re going back to all things merit-based – and that’s the way it should be!’
The Obamas had a different view.
“Today my heart breaks for every young person wondering what their future holds — and what opportunities are in store for them,” ex-first lady Michelle Obama said in a statement.
Former President Barack Obama said affirmative action had “enabled generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged.”
President Biden called the decision a “serious disappointment.” “This is not a normal court,” he said.
Roberts was joined in the majority opinion by Republican-appointed justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed
The judges decided in a 6-3 opinion that the race-based affirmative action admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) are unconstitutional.
The judges decided in a 6-3 opinion that the race-based affirmative action admissions policies of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC) are unconstitutional.
The ruling ends decades-old “affirmative action” policies designed to boost the number of black and Hispanic students in colleges. Now universities will have to look for new ways to better integrate minority groups and ensure representation among students.
“Because the Harvard and UNC admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives that justify the use of race, inevitably use race in a negative way, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful endpoints, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” reads the majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell called the court’s decision “illegal social engineering.”
“The Supreme Court decision on university admissions is a long overdue step towards equal protection under the law,” he said in a statement. “For decades, the Court turned a blind eye when higher education prioritized illegal social engineering over merit.”
House minority leader Hakeem Jeffries accused the judges of “turning back the clock.”
“Right-wing ideologues on the Supreme Court last year curtailed reproductive freedom. The same extremists have just obliterated consideration of racial diversity in college admissions. They clearly want to turn back the clock. We will NEVER let that happen,” he wrote on Twitter.
“The Court’s conservative majority has just turned nearly 50 years of established precedent on its head in a move that undermines the strides our country has made in advancing racial justice,” said Senate Majority Whip and Judiciary Chairman Dick Durbin, D-Ill., in a statement.
“Students of color will face admissions cycles that devalue their lived experience in America.”
Rep. Wesley Hunt, one of four black Republicans in the House of Representatives, praised Trump for appointing “not one, not two, but three constitutionalists to the Supreme Court.”
“Our country is strongest when we reward merit,” Hunt, R-Texas, said in a statement to DailyMail.com. Our country is at its best when we embrace meritocracy. I applaud the court for its decision.’
Roberts added that for too long colleges in the United States have mistakenly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not the challenges overcome, the skills accumulated or the lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our political history does not tolerate that choice.’
Roberts was joined in the majority opinion by Republican-appointed justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch and Brett Kavanaugh. Liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan disagreed.
“Today’s decision sets us back more than four decades,” said Representative Barbara Lee, a black California Democrat who is currently running for the Senate.
As Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said in her dissenting opinion, “Considering race as irrelevant in law doesn’t make it so in life.” This decision is just another example of the far right trying to uphold white supremacy and classism in our institutions.”
The universities were sued by Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative non-profit organization, over their race-based admissions policies in 2014, saying they violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment . The cases made their way through lower courts, which sided with Harvard and UNC, before reaching the Supreme Court for oral argument last year.
Harvard, in particular, was accused of it violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, a landmark piece of legislation first proposed by John F. Kennedy that sought to outlaw racial discrimination. Title VI “prohibits discrimination based on race, color, or national origin in programs or activities that receive federal funds or other federal financial assistance.”
The case argued that Asian-American students, in particular, are illegally disadvantaged by affirmative action policies because they score lower on Harvard’s vague “personal rating scale,” particularly on “likability” ratings and ‘positive personality’, compared to other applicants.