Breaking down the Supreme Court’s ruling ending affirmative action in college admissions

Amna Nawaz:

Welcome to the "NewsHour."

The U.S. Supreme Court today dealt a major blow to affirmative action in higher education, striking down race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

Geoff Bennett:

In rulings divided along ideological lines, the court's six-justice conservative majority said the schools discriminated against white and Asian American applicants by using race-conscious policies that benefited students from underrepresented backgrounds.

Chief Justice John Roberts, who has long been skeptical of such policies, authored the majority opinion. He wrote: "Many 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."

Amna Nawaz:

This afternoon at the White House, President Joe Biden criticized the rulings and said the country cannot abandon its pursuit of a more equal system of higher education.

Joe Biden, President of the United States: I know today's court decision is a severe disappointment to so many people, including me, but we cannot let the decision be a permanent setback for the country.

We need to keep an open door of opportunities.

Geoff Bennett:

We start our coverage tonight with "NewsHour" Supreme Court analyst Marcia Coyle.

Marcia, it's great to have you here.

Marcia Coyle:

Nice to be here, Geoff.

Geoff Bennett:

And we should say this ruling was not unexpected. But the court twice upheld race-conscious college admissions programs in the past 20 years, to include as recently as 2016.

Help us understand how this ruling today upends decades of its own precedents.

Marcia Coyle:

Well, there has really been a fundamental divide on the court for almost 40 years on the constitutionality of race preferences.

The conservatives believe that they are unconstitutional. The liberal justices feel that race preferences that are benign, that do give benefits, are good. And the court has said that's one of the very, very few reasons that the Constitution will allow race preferences. So that's why, today, it did upend, in a sense, what it had been doing for many decades.

Geoff Bennett:

I want to read a bit more from Chief John Roberts' opinion.

In the majority opinion, he notes: "Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise."

So some people have taken that to mean that an applicant can write an essay about how race affected his or her life. But, in the court's opinion, how does the use of affirmative action in college admission practices run afoul of the Constitution?

Marcia Coyle:

Well, they cannot use it as a factor in admissions. It can't be a dominant factor or the determinative factor. It cannot be a plus factor. It cannot be used in a negative way.

But the court did sort of leave the door open, and I think everyone's going to have to wait and see how this plays out, to admissions applications or essays in which an applicant talks about or discusses how race really affected that person's life, whether inspirational or not.

Geoff Bennett:

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case, because she had served for years on one of Harvard's governing bodies, but she participated in the North Carolina case.

Marcia Coyle:

Yes.

Geoff Bennett:

And she wrote a scathing dissent, part of which reads this way: "With let them eat cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the rip cord and announces colorblindness for all by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life."

Tell us more about what she wrote, alongside what we heard from Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who also dissented.

Marcia Coyle:

Well, both of them believe that there's nothing in the text of the 14th Amendment that prohibits racial preferences or race-conscious measures.

And they both oppose this idea of a colorblind Constitution. This is something Justice Thomas has been advocating for decades. In fact, today was sort of his crowning achievement that it's finally been recognized by the majority.

Justice Jackson used her dissent to very specifically address how the University of North Carolina's admissions policy worked and how it has — its policy has really inured to the benefit of everybody, not just those students who were getting the racial preference.

And she also felt, as Justice Sotomayor did, that the court was ignoring the facts of life on the ground in order to impose this colorblind rule.

Geoff Bennett:

Marcia Coyle, thank you so much for your analysis. We appreciate it.

Marcia Coyle:

My pleasure, Geoff.