Supreme Court’s Affirmative Action Ruling Draws Celebration and Criticism

Activists from the Asian American Coalition for Education protest against affirmative action outside the U.S. Supreme Court building in Washington on June 29, 2023. (Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision to strike down race-based admissions policies at U.S. colleges—known as affirmative action policies—was met with celebration as well as disappointment and defiance.

Prior to Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court had allowed colleges to weigh an applicant’s race when making admissions decisions. In the 1978 case Regents of the University of California v. Bakke and the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, the Supreme Court ruled that colleges could favor minority groups as long as they considered other factors beyond race specifically and did not implement racial quota systems.

The Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) challenged affirmative action policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, culminating in the Supreme Court’s ruling on Thursday in SFFA v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, finding that college race-based admissions programs are unconstitutional. Much of the arguments in the case focused on claims affirmative action policies unfairly impacted college applicants of Asian descent.

“The opinion issued today by the United States Supreme Court marks the beginning of the restoration of the colorblind legal covenant that binds together our multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation,“ said SFFA founder and president Edward Blum. “The polarizing, stigmatizing, and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to either admit them or reject them has been overruled. These discriminatory admission practices undermined the integrity of our country’s civil rights laws.”

Outside the Supreme Court on Thursday, a group of SFFA’s supporters celebrated the decision and held banners and signs with messages such as “Stop anti-Asian discrimination,” “Do not scapegoat Asians,” “Diversity ≠ skin color,” and “My race should not hurt me in admissions.” Among those celebrating the decision were members of the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACE).

While some Asian Americans championed SFFA’s cause, a trio of activists affiliated with OCA–Asian Pacific American Advocates were among those who criticized the Supreme Court’s decision on Thursday.

“It’s definitely disheartening to see arguments like this because there’s a lot of misinformation and disinformation regarding affirmative action and I think just the main important thing is that Asian Americans, we are not just a monolith, that, like these arguments, does not represent all of us,” one of the OCA advocates told a group of reporters outside the court.

Affirmative Action Opponents Cheer Decision

“I’m so excited for the Asian American community, for our children. This is a historic victory for Asian and all Americans,” AACE founding president Yukong Mike Zhao told NTD News. “From today on, our children and future generations will not be treated as second-class citizens in college admissions.”

Jonathan Butcher, the Will Skillman Senior Research Fellow in Education Policy at the conservative Heritage Foundation, also celebrated in his initial reaction to the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision.

“I think that this is a huge victory for students, really, from all backgrounds, all races and all ethnicities,” Butcher told NTD News.

Butcher said affirmative action would often result in its beneficiaries being admitted to challenging academic settings where they underperform.

“When students come from non-competitive high schools, and they are given a racial preference and admitted into a rigorous college, they struggle, their grades struggle, their confidence suffers, and then their future prospects in the job market suffer,” he said.

Butcher also said affirmative action policies would often lead students from minority backgrounds to question whether they earned their place through academic merit or because of their skin color, leading them to feel undeserving and judged by their peers.

“We need to get to that point where students can be admitted to a school and know that they got there of their own work, of their own effort,” Butcher said.

Affirmative Action Supporters Say Ruling Hurts ‘Progress’

In her dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that the court’s ruling on affirmative action “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress” and “cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

Justice Ketanji Brown similarly wrote that “deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

Vice President Kamala Harris called the ruling “a step backward for our nation.” While not explicitly calling for colleges and universities to keep using racial affirmative action policies, Harris and President Joe Biden urged college admissions officials to “give serious consideration” to factors like a student’s financial means, where they grew up and attended high school, and “personal experiences of hardship or discrimination, including racial discrimination, that a student may have faced.”

Going forward, Blum said SFFA will monitor whether colleges begin applying new admissions factors that serve as a stand-in for an applicant’s race or ethnicity.

“If we feel that college or university is using something that basically mirrors racial classifications, that’s something that we would definitely object,” Blum said.

From NTD News