Members of the Supreme Court’s conservative majority are questioning the continued use of affirmative action in higher education
The court's six conservative justices all expressed doubts about the practice, which has been upheld under Supreme Court decisions reaching back to 1978. The court's three liberals defended the programs, which are similar to those used by many other private and public universities.
Justice Amy Coney Barrett, another conservative, pointed to one of the court's previous affirmative action cases and said it anticipated a halt to its use in declaring that any classification based on race was “dangerous” and had to have an end point. Likewise, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s newest justice and its first Black woman, also said race was being used among 40 different factors at the University of North Carolina as part of a broad review of applicants.Justice Elena Kagan, who was the first female dean at Harvard Law School earlier in her career, called universities the “pipelines to leadership in our society” and suggested that without affirmative action minority enrollment will drop.
The cases are brought by conservative activist Edward Blum, who also was behind an earlier affirmative action challenge against the University of Texas as well as the case that led the court in 2013 to end the use of a key provision of the landmark Voting Rights Act.The group argues that the Constitution forbids the use of race in college admissions and calls for overturning earlier Supreme Court decisions that said otherwise.
In the Harvard case, lawyer Seth Waxman pointed to lower court findings rejecting claims that Harvard discriminates on the basis of race. Waxman said the school looks for many different kinds of diversity, including having oboe players for its student orchestra.
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