The Demise of Race Conscious Admissions

In June of 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court decided the companion cases Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College (“SFAA v. Harvard”) and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina (“SFAA v. UNC”), ruling, in a majority opinion by Chief Justice Roberts, that Harvard’s and UNC’s race-conscious admissions programs violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. Prior to the Harvard and UNC decisions, the Court permitted higher education institutions to consider race as a factor in admissions decisions under limited circumstances. In previous cases, the Court had upheld race-conscious admissions programs that were a part of a holistic review process in which race was one factor of many to be considered, recognizing that colleges and universities (1) had a compelling interest in the educational benefits of a racially diverse student body (2) provided that their admissions programs did not rely on specific quotas or racial balancing goals, but instead were based on the individual characteristics of applicants.

In the Harvard and UNC cases, the lower courts upheld the schools’ admissions programs, finding that the institutions had a compelling educational interest in maintaining a diverse student body for the following reasons: promoting understanding among racial groups, eroding racial stereotypes, and equipping students for a diverse workplace. The Supreme Court overturned the decisions by the trial courts. While acknowledging that these goals were “commendable,” the Court found that they were incapable of precise measurement and therefore “not sufficiently coherent” to pass constitutional muster. In making this determination, the majority opinion identified four characteristics that a race-conscious admissions program must satisfy for constitutional review purposes:

• First, there must be a “meaningful connection” between the means employed by race-conscious admissions programs and the goals they pursue.  Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs came up short because the racial categories they employed were “imprecise” and “plainly overbroad.”
• Second, a candidate’s race alone may not be used as a “plus” factor in the “zero sum” environment of admissions decisions, because a “benefit provided to some applicants but not to others necessarily advantages the former group at the expense of the latter.”
• Third, race-conscious admissions programs cannot use race in a manner that reinforces racial stereotypes.  The Harvard and UNC programs were found to be premised on the “pernicious stereotype that a black student can usually bring something that a white person cannot offer,” and were thus invalid on that ground.
• Fourth, a permissible race-conscious admissions program must have a “logical end point,” which the Harvard and UNC programs lacked.