U.S. Supreme Court Ends Affirmative Action & What Comes Next

For about the last half-century, the highest court in the United States has historically stood by its decision to allow affirmative action in high-education admissions. But that is no longer the case, as on June 29th, the Supreme Court banned it altogether in Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard. Today, let us understand the specifics of this case and what it means for the future of such admissions.

Let’s start with a definition. Affirmative action, also known as positive discrimination, is having particular sets of policies within an organization to include a group of individuals underrepresented (commonly in areas like employment and education) in the status quo. Gender, race, and nationality can be such dividing factors. However, the Supreme Court decision we’re looking into addresses colleges considering race as a factor in their student admissions processes.

In past cases like the 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, the U.S. Supreme Court has historically held up the act of affirmative action. However, that hasn’t meant that affirmative action in college admissions didn’t get challenged in court. Several lawsuits have challenged the practice, and many filed over alleged unfair-admissions policies of elite schools like Harvard College. In one crucial landmark case back in 1978, the Regents of the University of California v. Allan Bakke, the court upheld affirmative action but rejected the use of racial quotas. The school had reserved 16 of 100 seats for minority students, trying to remedy past discrimination, an act known as a racial quota. Bakke said he should have gotten admitted as he had higher scores than many accepted minority students. The Supreme Court ruled it was against the law to have quotas for minority groups when trying to balance admission diversity or using affirmative action to balance past discrimination. It was a win for Bakke, and he eventually graduated from the University of California Davis Medical School in 1982, though his case didn’t kill affirmative action.

The 1978 ruling made maintaining a diverse student body hefty for colleges. And after the court later ruled that colleges had to have concrete diversity goals, it made it seemingly impossible for colleges. But the court did allow the consideration of an individual’s race if race was the factor of another factor in the admissions process, which made it possible for colleges to diversify their student body without using a quota. And that’s the complicated legal process colleges managed to pull off affirmative action. So why did the court strike it down after supporting the practice for so long?

The short reason is affirmative action hasn’t always held up well in the Supreme Court, although the court for decades had supported the practice. The long answer is, unsurprisingly, complicated. The legality of affirmative action was maintained by a thin margin, as many blockbuster decisions allowed it by a single justice’s vote. And three years ago, in 2020, a majority Conservative court came onto the stage. It was just a matter of time before the court struck down the practice, as Conservatives had always wanted to ban affirmative action. By a 6-3 vote, along party lines, the court decided that considering a student’s race in college admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. That clause states that “nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws,” mandating individuals get equally treated in similar situations as under the law. The ruling overruled previous landmark cases like Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978).

So what comes next? How will students of different races be affected? Although we still have to wait until a new group of students enrol in colleges to get the actual results, there are already hints of what might ensue after the striking down of affirmative action. California banned the practice some 25 years ago, and there have been some notable effects since then, like the substantially decreased enrollment of Black and Hispanic students at elite schools. It didn’t mean minority groups enrolled less in colleges; They just didn’t get admitted to the esteemed ones like UC Berkeley. However, these minority students became less likely to achieve STEM degrees and earned less in the same careers after California banned affirmative action. So in the specific case of California, there was an overall negative impact after the ban on the practice. It also gives us a look into the effects the recent Supreme Court ruling may have across the United States.

What do you think about the landmark decision? Although it guarantees White and Asian Americans are not reverse discriminated against, does it make Americans better off? We’ll have to wait for the new generation to graduate to know the answer. But you don’t need to wait four years to answer the first question; Just put your thoughts in the comments! That’s the end of this production from the New News Newsminute. Thank you for reading. Subscribe and share so that you and others don’t miss the latest news updates.