SCOTUS conservatives question racial preferences at Harvard, UNC
The Supreme Court’s six conservative justices appeared skeptical Monday of the continued use of race-conscious college admissions policies, as they heard arguments in two cases that could bring about the end of affirmative action in the university application process.
The cases center around challenges to policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that consider race as one of many factors in evaluating college applications.
The high court has repeatedly upheld race-conscious admissions programs over the years — but a new 6-3 conservative majority is widely anticipated to strike down at least part of the practice.
Clarence Thomas, one of two black justices, questioned the notion of diversity during oral arguments.
“I’ve heard the word ‘diversity’ quite a few times and I don’t have a clue what it means,” Thomas said at one point.
“Tell me what the educational benefits are?” he asked at another point.
Justice Brett Kavanaugh, also a member of the court’s conservative wing, told the lawyer defending UNC’s policies that “these racial classifications are potentially dangerous and must have a logical end point.”Another conservative, Justice Amy Coney Barrett, asked: “When is your sunset? When does this end?”
Affirmative action was introduced decades ago as a way to give a leg up to historically marginalized applicants, including blacks and Hispanics, who were shut out of the nation’s top colleges and universities.
But critics contend the policy is unfair to white and Asian-American applicants and violates equal protection law.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the sole Hispanic on the court, said minority students could have experienced educational disadvantages even before applying to college.”If you’re black, you’re more likely to be in an under-resourced school, you’re more likely to be taught by teachers who are not as qualified as others, you’re more likely to be viewed as having less academic potential,” she said.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman on the court, noted that race-based factors are only one of the many that colleges consider during the admission process. “You keep saying that you object to the use of race standing alone,” she told the lawyer challenging the affirmative-action policies.
“But as I read the record and understand their process, it’s never standing alone, that it’s in the context of all of the other factors – there are 40 factors about all sorts of things that the admissions office is looking at. And you haven’t demonstrated or shown one situation in which all they look at is race,” she said.
Chief Justice John Roberts, a conservative, said that if schools no longer are permitted to solicit applicants’ race through “checking a box” on an admissions application, “maybe there’d be an incentive for a university to, in fact, pursue race-neutral alternatives.”
The justices heard the UNC case first and the Harvard case afterward. Justice Jackson, a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School as well as a former member of the university’s Board of Overseers, recused herself from the latter case.
Lower courts previously tossed plaintiffs’ contention that both Harvard and UNC discriminate against Asian American and white applicants.
The organization Students for Fair Admissions sued Harvard in 2014, alleging the Ivy League school violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 barring discrimination based on race, color or national origin under any program or activity that gets federal funds.
The group, headed by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, also sued UNC in 2014, accusing the university of using race as the main factor in admissions, and violating the Constitution’s 14th Amendment equal protection clause.
The plaintiffs are asking the justices to overturn the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which found that colleges could consider race as one factor in the admissions process to achieve a diverse student body.
The court is hearing arguments on the UNC case in the morning, followed by Harvard later on Monday.
An eventual decision, expected in the spring, may have ripple effects across higher education — but will mostly impact the country’s most competitive universities in specific states.
Harvard, whose undergraduate acceptance rate is around 5%, has admitted incoming freshman classes that have been increasingly less white over time, according to figures compiled by the New York Times.
Most students admitted to the Ivy League this year were applicants of color, the outlet found. Asian American applicants made up roughly 28% of admitted students this cycle — up from 20% in 2013.
More than 55% of students at UNC were white last year, according to the Times — down from 66% about 10 years ago.
Close to two-thirds of Americans say they do not think officials should consider the race of applicants in college and university admissions, a recent poll from the Washington Post-Schar School found.
That same poll also found that a similar majority Americans — roughly 64% — overall wanted universities to take steps to ensure student diversity on campus.
Nine states have already banned affirmative action: Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington. And most higher ed institutions already accept a majority of their applicants.
With Post wires
