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THE HARVARD CRIMSON
NEWS
JUNE 30, 2023
OPINION FROM PAGE 1
Breakdown: The Supreme Court Opinion it, I thought it was a smart choice on their part,” Sander said, calling the opinion “very well crafted.” Richard T. Ford, a professor at Stanford Law School, said he found it “interesting” that the Supreme Court “seemed to want to avoid acknowledging” whether or not Grutter had been overruled, making it appear — from Ford’s perspective — “that they wanted to make this look less radical than it really is.” “Justice Roberts — and then also when one looks at Justice Kavanaugh’s concurrence — went to great pains to claim that they weren’t overruling their past precedents and instead were just applying them,” Ford said. “Now, that’s quite odd because — of course — the past precedents allowed for the use of race in affirmative action and this opinion appears to foreclose the use of race in affirmative action.”
been unmistakably clear that any deference must exist ‘within constitutionally prescribed limits.’”
IMPRECISE CATEGORIES (p. 33)
COMPELLING INTERESTS (p. 6)
Roberts added that the admissions programs in use by the two schools “also fail to comply with the Equal Protection Clause’s twin commands” and that they “require stereotyping — the very thing Grutter foreswore.” In a significant caveat, Roberts wrote “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life.”
“Universities may define their missions as they see fit. The Constitution defines ours,” the Chief Justice wrote.
RACE QUA RACE (p. 37)
CAVEAT ON LIFE EXPERIENCES (p. 8)
However this usage of race, it continued, must be “concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”
INVOKING BROWN (p. 4)
Roberts wrote that Harvard’s and UNC’s race-based admissions programs engage in “stereotyping” as they see an “inherent benefit in race qua race — in race for race’s sake.” “The entire point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of their skin color is not like treating them differently because they are from a city or from a suburb, or because they play the violin poorly or well,” Roberts added. Criticizing the dissents — which were authored by Jackson and Associate Justice Sonia M. Sotomayor — Roberts wrote that they “do not acknowledge” Supreme Court precedent.
CAVEAT ON DISSCUSSION OF EFFECT ON LIFE (p. 47)
The opinion invoked Brown v. Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision that struck down segregation in American schools. In an echo of his opinion in a 2007 case on race-based admissions at a Seattle high school — where Roberts wrote that “the only way to stop discriminating on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race” — the Chief Justice wrote that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”
ECHO OF 2007 ROBERTS OPINION (p. 23)
“The principal dissent wrenches our case law from its context, going to lengths to ignore the parts of that law it does not like,” Roberts wrote. “Most troubling of all is what the dissent must make these omissions to defend: a judiciary that picks winners and losers based on the color of their skin.
CONSTITUTIONAL HISTORY (p. 48) Thursday’s majority opinion referenced the precedent set in Grutter, which stated that universities would no longer need to use race in their college admissions programs after 25 years: “Twenty years later, no end is in sight.” Though Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions systems are “well intentioned and implemented in good faith,” the Court found that the universities’ programs fail the criteria for strict scrutiny. In a crucial footnote, Roberts acknowledged Solicitor General Elizabeth B. Prelogar’s argument that affirmative action in military academies is vital to national security, but noted that none of those schools’ policies are at question in this case. “This opinion also does not address the issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present,” Roberts wrote. The majority opinion continued that Harvard’s and UNC’s stated interests in a diverse student body “cannot be subjected to meaningful judicial review.”
INQUIRIES NO COURT COULD RESOLVE (p. 31)
“How many fewer leaders Harvard would create without racial preferences, or how much poorer the education at Harvard would be, are inquiries no court could resolve,” Roberts wrote. Roberts criticized Harvard and UNC for considering Asian American applicants as a single group, writing that by doing so, the schools “are apparently uninterested in whether South Asian or East Asian students are adequately represented, so long as there is enough of one to compensate for a lack of the other.” Conceding that past decisions have given universities latitude in how to run their affairs, Roberts wrote that, nonetheless, “we have
Toward the end of the opinion, Roberts again stated that while Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause, there is room for the targeted use of race in college admissions. “At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Roberts wrote. Roberts continued that “in other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”The Chief Justice concluded the opinion with a criticism of how universities have previously considered race in admissions, writing that “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,” Roberts wrote. rahem.hamid@thecrimson.com neil.shah@thecrimson.com
