PHILADELPHIA (KYW Newsradio) — On June 29, the Supreme Court ended affirmative action at colleges.
Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit that challenges affirmative action, sued the University of North Carolina and Harvard for unfairly using race to give preference to underrepresented minority applicants, which adversely impacted white and Asian-American applicants.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority opinion and found both universities’ race-conscious admission policies violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment.
"Many universities have, for too long, … concluded wrongly that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin," he wrote. "Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson wrote part of the dissenting opinion, alongside Justice Sonia Sotomayor, saying, “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
While there have been several protests supporting the use of affirmative action in universities, a recent poll by the Washington Post found six in 10 Americans agree with the court’s decision.
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“Americans want their children to go to diverse environments to learn but they don't like quota systems,” said Susan Liebell, a political science professor at Saint Joseph’s University. “They don’t seem to understand that none of these schools are using quota systems.”
She says this will specifically affect law school admissions because, unlike dentistry and medicine, the law is a heavily white-dominated field.
“Law matters a great deal because the judges and the lawyers who represent people are more sympathetic and more understanding of problems that they or their families face,” she added.
To learn more about what went into the decision and how it will affect the future of college admissions, take a listen to the full conversation below: