Clip: The consequences of the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling

Lisa Desjardins: The Supreme Court is now on summer break, but leaving us quite a wake, a series of historic rulings with far-reaching consequences for race, education and elections in America.

For the second year in a row, the Roberts Court overturned years of legal precedent and ruled against a widespread practice conservatives have long sought to end. This year, it was affirmative action.

The justices ruled Thursday that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina's consideration of an applicant's race in college admissions is unconstitutional. Chief Justice John Roberts wrote the majority's opinion saying the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor, in the dissenting opinion, wrote, this court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. Reaction to the ruling was swift and along party lines.

Joe Biden: We cannot let this decision be the last word. Discrimination still exists in America. Today's decision does not change that.

Lisa Desjardins: But Republicans, like South Carolina Senator and Republican Presidential Candidate Tim Scott celebrated.

Tim Scott: This is the day where we understand that being judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin, is what our Constitution wants.

Lisa Desjardins: And there was joy and hope from those who brought and won the lawsuit.

Calvin Yang, Member, Students for Fair Admissions: Today's victory transcends far beyond those of us sitting in this room today.

Lisa Desjardins: Buckle up. We start there with a phenomenal panel. Eugene Daniels is Politico's White House correspondent and co-author of Politico playbook, Ariane De Vogue is a Supreme Court reporter for CNN, Seung Min Kim, the White House reporter at the Associated Press, and John Yang, my colleague on PBS NewsHour and anchor of PBS News Weekend.

Ariane, I want to start with you. This affirmative action case seems to have sparked the most headlines. Does it have the most impact of the decisions this week?

Ariane De Vogue, Supreme Court Reporter, CNN: You have to think that it does, for several reasons. First of all, it totally makes these schools now have to go back, revamp, figure out new ways to try to get diversity in their campuses, race-neutral means. But there was lots of messages, too, messages about what it means to have a diverse campus and why the schools argued so hard for diversity, not just for the kid in the classroom, but for the teachers, for the fact that the school is a pipeline to society.

And so the graduates go on to society, go into the medical fields, Corporate America in different areas, really such a vitally different way to look at the America on the two sides of this issue. So, it just seems so impactful.

Lisa Desjardins: I love that point. It does seem to be at the collision point of sort of these political and cultural debate we've had a long time. And, John, you raised two quotes that you saw to me earlier. obert's quote, he wrote, eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. However, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson in her dissent, wrote, our country has never been colorblind. Can you take us through this fault line and what you read from the justices about how do you define discrimination?

John Yang, Correspondent, PBS Newshour: Well, Chief Justice Roberts has wanted -- has been skeptical of race-based programs ever since he was a junior attorney in the Reagan White House. This is something I think he really wanted to happen. It took him a while to get the majority. Not only that, now he has a majority, he has a supermajority.

But that debate over society and race-based programs really was evident in the dueling opinions from Clarence Thomas' concurring opinion and the two dissents from Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson, and especially between Jackson and Thomas, because Thomas, they both agreed that affirmative action was to right the wrongs, the historical wrongs.

But they have very different views of how it works, of the effect of it. Clarence Thomas saw it as a burden. He says that it took away the accomplishment, that it tells people of color they're inferior, that it's an anchor. Well, Jackson was saying, no, it lifts you up, it lifts all of us up. And Sotomayor made note of the fact that the three women -- the three women justices of color on the court, she says, we are all products of affirmative action.

Lisa Desjardins: So, I mean, this is the Trump legacy, right, seven, yes. And so my question here is who do you think politically benefits more? Is it Republicans who wanted this and are celebrating, or is it Democrats who there's maybe anger base?

Seung Min Kim, White House Reporter, The Associated Press: It really depends. I've been trying to think through what kind of immediate political impact we will see as a result of this ruling in the 2024 elections, because you are right, it is actually anger that motivates voters to turn out and go to the polls. We saw that a lot with the abortion rulings. And we will almost see the continued political impact of the Dobbs decision from last year in next year's presidential election.

But affirmative action is a little bit trickier to figure out. And what I was actually looking at is what's going to be the immediate impact of this decision in other ways. I think there's a sense that this could galvanize other legal challenges to, for example, corporate diversity policies and challenging those types of decisions and policies in that arena. And I do think that this gives opponents of policies, like affirmative action, like a galvanizing sense to go after it, go after those sorts of diversity policies in the legal arena, in legislation and in other areas as well.

Lisa Desjardins: Eugene, the President said this is not the last word, and that was echoed by other people in the Biden administration. Okay. What does that mean?

Eugene Daniels, White House Correspondent, Politico: It's unclear because there's not a lot of levers that they have to pull, right? Because this is the Supreme Court essentially saying that racism is a thing of the past when it comes to this country, which is something that, if we're all being honest around this table, we know that is not true.

And so the question that a lot of voters have and will continue to have for the administration is what are you going to do about it. There are -- you talk to them and you try to figure it out. They don't seem to have a great handle on what they're able to do. Something this administration does do quite often, kind of send out fact sheets, lots of them, to colleges and universities or whomever to say, these are the things you can do to kind of get around this law or get around this ruling.

For example, I was a high school student in Texas, and every student in the top 10 percent could get into the U.T. system, right? And so that means if you went to a school of all black students, 10 percent of that student body went straight -- could go to U.T., right? And that's the best -- one of the best schools in that state.

So, that's something that they could try to use to get around that, but they have yet to really signal what's the next step here.

Ariane De Vogue: And that will be challenged?

Eugene Daniels: Yes, exactly.

Lisa Desjardins: That's the next question, yes.

Ariane De Vogue: Those things are going to be challenged. And the next challenges that are going to come here are race-neutral programs. Can you have a race-neutral program? Is that really hiding the ball? We've already seen some challenges touching on that in the lower courts and be sure that those issues are going to come back to the court, so it's not over that way.

And the schools, meanwhile, are sitting and waiting to figure out what to do. My daughter graduated recently. Her college sent her the day the decision came down, said, we're looking at this. Give it a few months. We're looking at what do we do, what can we do?

John Yang: College officials are trying to figure out what they can and can't do, even in recruiting, even in going out and talking to students. Because one way Berkeley has gotten around this, they had a ballot initiative that ended racial preferences in both universities and public hiring is that they've expanded the funnel, as they say. They're looking in different areas.

And the other thing that a lot of college officials I've talked to are girding for is a challenge based on race -- based on sex, rather, because if you look at the college applications, they are predominantly women. When you look at the campuses, it's more even.

Lisa Desjardins: I want to get back to what Seung Min was saying is, could this have a wider impact on, say, businesses? And let me start with a ridiculous premise to see what you guys say. Let's say that you are a member of a political party whose presidential candidate says his vice presidential nominee will be a black woman. Is that the kind of thing that could fall? Would Amy Klobuchar be able to sue in this situation? Where do you all think court reporters, businesses, how far do we think this could go?

Ariane De Vogue: Well, I think as far as -- are you looking at challenges like what businesses can do?

Lisa Desjardins: Yes, diversity programs in businesses, for example, internships at law firms, those kinds of things?

Ariane De Vogue: Well, certainly the seed has been planted here, and that's not only -- I mean, we talked about the fact that businesses are going to be affected by this decision, right? They're going to be affected because they may suffer from diversity if it's not coming through the pipeline. But, yes, we're going to see a lot of other different kinds of challenges. I think this is just sort of the beginning.

Eugene Daniels: Because it's a signaling right to kind of everyone that, one, the Supreme Court is open to these kinds of things and very willing to go out on a limb and do something that maybe some Americans don't agree with, but it's also it shows that the American people, as they try to we have this conversation about race, the backlash has been swift, and that means that not just the political or legal aspect of our country, the cultural aspects of our country are going to be taken all under this. And like you said, it is the very beginning of it.

Ariane De Vogue: And plus the fact Roberts in a footnote said, oh, this doesn't apply to military service schools. So, wait, what? And you saw some of the dissenters say, well, wait a minute, why? What is the real rationale there? He didn't say much. He said that they didn't bring this. They weren't a part of this challenge. This won't apply. But the Biden administration, when they went in and argued this, their entire oral argument for a bit of time was all on the military.

Now, they were trying to say, look at how important it is in the military. It's got to be as important for the rest of the country. But the conservatives on the court didn't buy into that. They just looked at the military itself. So, that will be interesting.

Lisa Desjardins: Another big PBS broad question, Seung Min, I'm curious. Race has been a fault line in this country for forever, but especially now in these past few elections, I wonder, what do you think this does for this divide over race. It's obviously too early to know, but what are you thinking about?

Seung Min Kim: I mean, it certainly intensifies the focus on the issue of race, just having this blockbuster ruling out there and just all of the implications that it has, not just in college admissions, but in politics and in other policies. I think it certainly keeps the issue at the forefront for a really long time.

And I wanted to go back to kind of just what the earlier argument that we were making, just kind of about what President Biden and his administration can do in terms of channeling that anger and just trying to turn it into an electoral plus.

He's actually not doing one thing that he conceivably could do, which is to embrace proposals to change the court and to reform the court. Because that is if you're looking at kind of the reaction from Democratic lawmakers, from activists, especially not just on this, but on the student loan issue, which I know we'll talk about later, they are taking their anger out on the Supreme Court, a Supreme Court that many of them feel is not legitimate because of the way that particularly one of the justices got on the court, because Mitch McConnell holding that seat open for more than a year.

And in theory, President Biden could say, well, he did say this was not a normal court and that he strongly disagreed with the rulings that came out today. But he is still resistant to, for example, embracing term limits for justices or expanding the court, like so many in his base want to do. We have asked the White House over and over in the last couple of days if this changes the president's view at all on those Court so called court reform changes, and it really doesn't. He kind of punched it to a commission earlier in his presidency, and that's where it will remain.

Ariane De Vogue: But he knows, too, don't forget how many years he spent on the Senate Judiciary Committee. He saw enough nomination hearings to know that if somebody else was in the White House and they expanded the number of justices on the court, that's --

Lisa Desjardins: It's a guardrail.

Ariane De Vogue: I mean, he's done it for a lot of years. He knows that that's --

Seung Min Kim: And he's an institutionalist at heart.