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The Supreme Court had twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, including as recently as 2016.
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court's conservative majority on Thursday struck down affirmative action in college admissions, forcing institutions of higher education to look for new ways to achieve diverse student bodies.
The court overturned admissions plans at Harvard and the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest private and public colleges, respectively.
The vote was 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, where Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself because she had been a member of an advisory governing board there.
Who voted to strike down affirmative action?
Justices appointed by Republican presidents voted to overturn affirmative action in college admissions. These are:
- Chief Justice John Roberts
- Samuel Alito
- Clarence Thomas
- Neil Gorsuch
- Brett Kavanaugh
- Amy Coney Barrett
Who voted to keep affirmative action?
Justices appointed by Democrat presidents voted to keep affirmative action. These include:
- Elena Kagan
- Sonia Sotomayor
- Ketanji Brown Jackson
Chief Justice John Roberts said that for too long universities have “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. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote in dissent that the decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”
In a separate dissent, Jackson — the court’s first Black female justice — called the decision “truly a tragedy for us all.”
Lower courts also had upheld the programs at both UNC and Harvard University, rejecting claims that the schools discriminated against white and Asian-American applicants.
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