Colleges barred from considering race as an admissions factor

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action in cases brought against the University of North Carolina and Harvard University. Six of the nine justices agreed that a school’s use of race as a factor when considering applicants for admissions violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. Three justices dissented, and Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was recused from the Harvard case. Students For Fair Admissions, a nonprofit advocacy group, filed both lawsuits in 2014, alleging that the schools’ admissions policies discriminated against white and Asian American students.

How has the Supreme Court ruled on affirmative action in the past? After the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Supreme Court ruled on several occasions that schools could consider race as part of admissions decisions, but the schools could not use it as a quota system to meet diversity goals. Now, colleges may still hear how a student says race affects his or her life as a part of evaluating the student’s application. 

Dig deeper: From the WORLD archives, read Laura Edghill’s report about an investigation into racial discrimination in Yale admissions.