UNC’s race-conscious admissions policy is unconstitutional, US Supreme Court rules
The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled against UNC-Chapel Hill’s race-conscious undergraduate admissions policy, saying the university’s consideration of race in admissions is a violation of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
The 6-3 majority opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is a victory for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), the anti-affirmative action plaintiff in the case against UNC. It marks the Supreme Court’s latest landmark ruling on affirmative action, the policy allowing colleges and universities to consider race as one factor in admissions decisions.
The court’s ruling also applies to Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions policy, which had been the subject of a separate, but similar, lawsuit filed by SFFA on the same day in 2014 as the group’s challenge to UNC’s policy. The court heard oral arguments in each case on the same day in October.
In prior legal challenges to race-conscious affirmative action, dating back at least two decades, the court had maintained that such practices were permissible, provided race was used in a narrow, highly individualized way, and that universities had a compelling reason to do so — namely, to achieve a diverse student body and the educational benefits that stem from it.
The court ruled that UNC and Harvard’s policies “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,” and thus “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.”
Roberts did not explicitly say in the majority opinion that the court was overturning past rulings such as in Grutter v. Bollinger, the case involving the University of Michigan that has largely stood as precedent since 2003, but the ruling undoubtedly scaled back significantly, if not ended, the allowable consideration of race in admissions.
“A lot of precedent is being, if not explicitly overruled, is being overruled in fact,” Ted Shaw, a professor at the UNC School of Law who specializes in civil rights and affirmative action, told The News & Observer Thursday. “And the court is abandoning its imprimatur on conscious attempts to bring about more inclusion and diversity in higher education.”
UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz addressed the ruling in a statement.
“Carolina remains firmly committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and continues to make an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond,” Guskiewicz said. “While not the outcome we hoped for, we will carefully review the Supreme Court’s decision and take any steps necessary to comply with the law.”
Can colleges still consider race in admissions?
In the majority opinion, Roberts appeared to suggest that universities may still be able to consider an applicant’s race in some way, writing that “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.”
But Roberts noted that those qualities must be closely tied to an applicant’s character or individual ability to contribute to the university, and that universities cannot “simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.”
“In other words,” Roberts wrote, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race.”
During oral arguments in the cases, the justices asked questions about the differences between students opting to “check a box” on an application to indicate their race, and discussing their identity in essays, as well as how universities consider those racial identifiers.
In its announcement of student essay prompts for the 2023-2024 admissions cycle, the Common Application, a membership-based college application platform used by more than 1,000 colleges nationwide, including UNC, stated that the organization is “closely following the Supreme Court case on the use of race in admissions.”
“Depending on the outcome,” the February announcement said, “we stand ready to create resources that will help students speak about their lived experiences.”
Three justices dissent
In all, the ruling and additional opinions spanned 237 pages.
Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett, all considered to be conservative-leaning, joined Roberts’ majority opinion. Thomas, Gorsuch and Kavanaugh filed concurring opinions, with Thomas also joining Gorsuch’s opinion.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson filed dissenting opinions, both of which Justice Elena Kagan joined.
In her dissent, Sotomayor said the court’s decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”
“At its core, today’s decision exacerbates segregation and diminishes the inclusivity of our Nation’s institutions in service of superficial neutrality that promotes indifference to inequality and ignores the reality of race,” she wrote.
Sotomayor also noted that the decision does not entirely dismantle holistic approaches college admissions, nor does it end “recruitment efforts that seek to enroll diverse classes without using racial classifications.”
Throughout its legal battle with UNC, SFFA had argued that the university could still achieve a diverse student body by considering factors other than race — generally referred to as “race-neutral alternatives” — such as socioeconomic status.
Richard Kahlenberg, a leading proponent of class-based affirmative action who testified on behalf of SFFA in the federal trial against UNC, previously told The News & Observer that other race-neutral alternatives universities could consider using include eliminating “legacy” admissions preferences for children of university alumni, increasing the number of community college students who transfer to the university or increasing the weight of students’ geography as a factor in admissions.
“Universities should continue to use those tools as best they can to recruit and admit students from different backgrounds based on all the other factors the Court’s opinion does not, and cannot, touch,” Sotomayor wrote in her dissent.
History of SFFA v. UNC
UNC and SFFA had been in a legal battle over the university’s admissions policy for nearly a decade, beginning in 2014 when SFFA filed its lawsuits.
SFFA, a group led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum and made up of rejected college applicants, prospective students and their parents, alleged that UNC’s use of race in admissions was detrimental to white and Asian American students, while disproportionately benefiting “underrepresented minority applicants with inferior academic credentials.”
UNC had defended its practices by arguing that race is used as an important, but not dominant, factor among dozens considered during the university’s holistic admissions process, and that the university’s policy was consistent with Supreme Court precedent.
A federal district court judge in 2021 ruled in favor of UNC and upheld its policies, following an eight-day trial the previous year.
About a month after the federal court issued its ruling, SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court to hear the case alongside the Harvard case. In January 2022, the court agreed to hear the cases, and oral arguments in each case took place on Oct. 31 of last year.
This story was originally published June 29, 2023 at 10:18 AM with the headline "UNC’s race-conscious admissions policy is unconstitutional, US Supreme Court rules."
