Likely impact of Supreme Court’s affirmative action decisions

On October 31, 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court heard oral arguments in two separate cases on whether race can be a decision in admissions to colleges. The two cases, Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. the University of North Carolina, seek to overturn the Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which allowed colleges to consider race as a factor in admissions.

Background

In 2003, the Supreme Court upheld universities’ ability to use race as a factor in ensuring a diverse student body in Grutter v. Michigan. The Court reaffirmed its Grutter decision in 2016, saying that it was permissible to consider race as a factor among many to achieve education diversity. In 2014, the Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) sued both Harvard and UNC, alleging Harvard penalized Asian-Americans and UNC penalized whites by giving preferences to black and Hispanic students.

The lower courts upheld both colleges’ admissions processes, saying their limited use of race in admissions was consistent with the Supreme Court’s precedent.

Oral argument

The Supreme Court heard the arguments separately beginning with the UNC case because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case.

During the unprecedented five and half hours of argument, the conservative justices focused on the SFFA’s allegations that the use of race as a factor discriminated against Asian and Asian-American students at Harvard.