Washington, D.C. On Monday, the Supreme Court debated whether to stop using affirmative action in higher education while grappling with enduring and challenging racial issues.
The judges had six different attorneys present their arguments in opposition to Harvard and University of North Carolina policy for at least an hour and forty minutes. In assessing applications for admission, such policies take race into account along with other reasons.
Following the overturning of the half-century precedent of Roe v. Wade in June, the cases offer a big new test of whether the court now dominated by conservatives will move the law to the right on another of the nation’s most contentious cultural issues.
Liberal justices raised issues early on in the proceedings that seemed to support the school’s policy.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s newest justice and its first Black female, said race was being used at the University of North Carolina as part of a broad review of applicants.
“The admissions office is looking at 40 factors about all sorts of stuff…. They’re looking at the entire individual with all of these features,” she said.
Justice Elena Kagan stated that without affirmative action, minority enrollment will decline and referred to colleges as “pipelines to leadership in our society.”
The fact that our institutions, you know, are reflective of who we are as a people in all our variety, I believed, was part of what it meant to be an American and to believe in American pluralism, she said.
In the previous 19 years, the Supreme Court has twice upheld policies that consider race when admitting students to colleges, including just six years ago.
But that was before President Donald Trump’s three appointees entered. Jackson was picked by Joe Biden as president this year.
Lower courts upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.
The claims are being launched by conservative activist Edward Blum, who was also the driving force behind an earlier affirmative action lawsuit against the University of Texas as well as the case that convinced the court to stop using a significant Voting Rights Act provision in 2013.
Students for Fair Admissions, which Blum founded, brought legal action against both colleges in 2014.
The group asks for overturning previous Supreme Court rulings that ruled otherwise and asserts that the Constitution bars the use of race in college admissions.
According to Students for Fair Admissions, colleges and universities can create a diverse student body in other, racial-neutral ways, such as by emphasising socioeconomic status and doing rid of the preference for offspring of alumni.
The institutions assert that they only consider race in a small number of decisions, but that doing so would make it far more difficult to enrol students who reflect the diversity of America.
The Biden administration is pleading with the court to uphold admissions that are based on race. Earlier in the instances, the Trump administration had adopted the opposing stance.
About 65% of the freshmen class at UNC, 22% of it are Asian Americans, 10% are Black, and 10% are Hispanic.
According to a school official, the figures total up to more than 100% because some pupils claim to fall under more than one category.
According to Harvard, little over 40% of the freshmen class is made up of white students. A little under 28% of the class is also Asian American, 14% are Black, and 12% are Latino.
Nine states, including Arizona, California, Florida, Georgia, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma, and Washington, currently forbid the use of race as a factor in determining admission to public colleges and universities.
Voters in California soundly rejected a ballot initiative to reinstate affirmative action in 2020.
Depending on how the question is posed, public opinion on the subject varies. According to a 2021 Gallup Poll, 62% of Americans supported affirmative action policies for racial minorities. However, a March Pew Research Center poll found that 74% of Americans, including majorities of Black and Latino respondents, believed that race and ethnicity shouldn’t be taken into account when deciding who gets into colleges.
Harvard is where Jackson and Chief Justice John Roberts earned their undergraduate and law degrees. There, two additional justices attended law school.
But Jackson is not participating in the Harvard case since, up until recently, she was a member of a board of advisors.
Before late spring, a decision in the affirmative action lawsuits is not anticipated.
Supreme Court considers racial discrimination in college admissions
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