The Root; Published By Jessica Washington
Photo: Chip Somodevilla (Getty Images)
The Supreme Court voted to massively curtail affirmative action in higher education. The justices ruled that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s race-based admissions policy violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
The court split along ideological lines with a 6-3 decision in the UNC case and a 6-2 decision in the Harvard case, since Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself. The ruling is expected to curb admissions of students of color at top universities, most of which use race as a factor among many others when determining admissions. Colleges will now have to scramble to ensure that they can still foster diversity, without being able to take an applicant’s race into account during the admissions process.
The ruling didn’t come as a complete shock. Court watchers and legal experts have been predicting that the Supreme Court would end affirmative action in education for years now.
Last June, The Root spoke with legal experts about their predictions for the case. Lisa A. Crooms-Robinson, a constitutional law professor at Howard University School of Law, said she suspected this outcome. Read more
