Episode description

Welcome to Supreme Court Opinions. In this episode, you’ll hear the Court’s opinion in Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v President and Fellows of Harvard College.

In this case, the court considered this issue: May institutions of higher education use race as a factor in admissions? If so, does Harvard College’s and UNC’s race-conscious admissions process violate Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964?

The case was decided on June 29, 2023.

The Supreme Court held that the Harvard and the UNC admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Chief Justice John Roberts authored the 6-3 majority opinion.

First, the Court concluded that Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) had organizational standing because it is a voluntary membership organization with identifiable members who support its mission and whom SFFA represents in good faith. 

Second, while the original purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause was to ensure that laws apply equally to everyone, regardless of race, both the Supreme Court and the nation failed to uphold this principle, most notably in Plessy v Ferguson, which sanctioned “separate but equal” facilities. However, the landmark case Brown v Board of Education overturned this, and the equal protection principle has since expanded to various areas of life. Any exceptions to equal protection must satisfy “strict scrutiny”; that is, the government must show that the racial classification serves a compelling interest and is narrowly tailored to achieve that interest.

In Regents of the University of California v Bakke, Justice Lewis Powell’s opinion became the touchstone for evaluating the constitutionality of race-based admissions, reasoning that diversity in the student body could be a “compelling state interest,” but that race could only be used as a “plus” in admissions and not as a quota. In Grutter v Bollinger, the Court adopted Powell's viewpoint, while also setting limits to ensure race-based admissions did not result in stereotyping or harm to non-minority applicants, and stating that such race-based programs should eventually come to an end.

Harvard’s (and UNC’s, in the consolidated case) race-based admissions systems fail to meet the strict scrutiny, non-stereotyping, and termination criteria established by Grutter and Bakke. Specifically, the universities could not demonstrate their compelling interests in a measurable way, failed to avoid racial stereotypes, and did not offer a logical endpoint for when race-based admissions would cease. As a result, the programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. However, the Court noted that nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.

Justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh each wrote a concurring opinion.

Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissenting opinion, in which Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson joined (except Justice Jackson took no part in the consideration or decision of the case against Harvard).

The opinion is presented here in its entirety, but with citations omitted. If you appreciate this episode, please subscribe. Thank you.