600 U.S. 181 (2023)
Harvard College, founded in 1636, has one of the most selective application processes in the country.1 Over 60,000 people applied to the school last year; fewer than 2,000 were admitted.2 Gaining admission can depend on grades, recommendation letters, or overcoming adversity.3 It can also depend on race.4
The admissions process begins with first readers who assign scores in six categories: academic, extracurricular, athletic, school support, personal, and overall.5 In assigning the overall rating, the first readers can and do take an applicant's race into account.6 Regional subcommittees evaluate applicants from particular geographic areas and make recommendations to the full committee. The full committee discusses the relative breakdown of applicants by race.7 At the end of the full committee meeting, the racial composition of the pool of tentatively admitted students is disclosed to the committee.8 The final stage is the lop, during which applicants under consideration for exclusion are placed on a lop list containing legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race.9
The University of North Carolina prides itself on being the nation's first public university.10 In a typical year, the school receives approximately 43,500 applications for its freshman class of 4,200.11 Every application is initially reviewed by one of approximately 40 admissions office readers.12 Readers are required to consider race and ethnicity as one factor in their review.13 Readers may offer students a plus based on their race, which may be significant in an individual case.14 The admissions decisions made by the first readers are, in most cases, provisionally final.15 Applications then go to school group review, where a committee of experienced staff members reviews every initial decision.16 In making those decisions, the review committee may also consider the applicant's race.17
Petitioner Students for Fair Admissions is a nonprofit organization founded in 2014 whose purpose is to defend human and civil rights secured by law, including the right of individuals to equal protection under the law.18 In November 2014, SFFA filed separate lawsuits against Harvard and UNC.19 The Harvard suit alleged a violation of Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.20 The UNC suit alleged a violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.21 After separate bench trials, both admissions programs were found permissible under the Equal Protection Clause.22 The First Circuit affirmed the judgment in the Harvard case.23 This Court granted certiorari in the Harvard case and certiorari before judgment in the UNC case.24
Whether SFFA satisfies the requirements for organizational standing under Article III?25
An organization may assert representational standing on behalf of its members when it satisfies the three-part test from Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm'n.26 The three requirements are that its members would otherwise have standing to sue in their own right.27 The interests it seeks to protect are germane to the organization's purpose.28 Neither the claim asserted nor the relief requested requires the participation of individual members in the lawsuit.29 The Court has recognized that a voluntary membership organization with identifiable members who support its mission and whom it represents in good faith is entitled to rely on this doctrine.30
Yes. SFFA is indisputably a voluntary membership organization with identifiable members who joined to support its mission of defending equal protection rights.31 The district courts in both cases found that SFFA satisfies all three Hunt factors.32 Respondents do not contest that finding.33
The indicia-of-membership analysis from Hunt has no applicability here because SFFA is not a state agency without traditional members but rather a 501(c)(3) nonprofit with members who receive updates and have input on the litigation. Upon the filing of the complaints in November 2014, SFFA represented four specific members denied admission to UNC and forty-seven members in the Harvard litigation, all of whom voluntarily joined and support the organization's purpose.
SFFA therefore satisfies Article III standing requirements, and the Court has jurisdiction to reach the merits.34
Whether Harvard's and UNC's race-based admissions programs further a compelling governmental interest under the Equal Protection Clause?35
Racial classifications are subject to strict scrutiny and are constitutional only if they further a compelling governmental interest. The Court has recognized only two compelling interests that permit race-based government action outside these cases: remedying specific, identified instances of past discrimination that violated the Constitution or a statute, and avoiding imminent and serious risks to human safety in prisons. Student body diversity has been treated as a compelling interest in prior cases.36 But only when the interest is sufficiently measurable to permit judicial review and is not an amorphous goal such as training future leaders or promoting a robust marketplace of ideas.37
No. Harvard identifies interests including training future leaders, preparing graduates to adapt to a pluralistic society, better educating students through diversity, and producing new knowledge from diverse outlooks.38 UNC points to promoting the robust exchange of ideas, broadening understanding, fostering innovation, preparing engaged citizens, and enhancing cross-racial empathy.39 These goals, while commendable, are not sufficiently coherent or measurable for strict scrutiny.40 It is unclear how a court could determine whether leaders have been adequately trained or when a particular mix of minority students produces engaged citizens.41
Comparing these asserted interests to recognized compelling interests such as preventing prison violence or remedying identified past discrimination illustrates their elusive nature.42 The universities' main response that courts should defer to academic judgments fails because deference must exist within constitutionally prescribed limits, and the Equal Protection Clause requires an exceedingly persuasive justification that is measurable and concrete.
The asserted interests are not sufficiently measurable to permit judicial review and therefore do not constitute compelling governmental interests under strict scrutiny.
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Justice Kavanaugh emphasized that Grutter itself imposed a temporal limit.43 The Court declared that race-based affirmative action in higher education could continue for another generation and only for another generation.44 The 25-year expectation articulated in Grutter formed an important part of the carefully constructed decision.45
It reflected the recognition that enshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences would offend the fundamental equal protection principle.46 Because a generation has now passed since Grutter, the Court's decision today appropriately respects and abides by that explicit temporal limit rather than discarding it.
Whether Harvard's and UNC's race-based admissions programs are narrowly tailored under the Equal Protection Clause?47
Even if a compelling interest exists, the government's use of race must be narrowly tailored, meaning it is necessary to achieve that interest. Narrow tailoring requires that the classification be the least restrictive means available and that race never be used as a negative or as a stereotype.48 Programs must have a logical end point and may not operate on the belief that minority students always express some characteristic minority viewpoint. Race may operate only as a plus in a flexible manner that considers all pertinent elements of diversity.49
No. The programs fail narrow tailoring in multiple respects.50 First, they use race in a negative manner.51 The First Circuit found that Harvard's consideration of race has resulted in an 11.1 percent decrease in Asian-American admissions.52 The district court observed that the policy overall results in fewer Asian-American and white students being admitted.53
College admissions are zero-sum, so a benefit to some applicants necessarily disadvantages others. Second, the programs engage in racial stereotyping by assuming that students of a particular race, because of their race, think alike and can bring something that others cannot.54 Third, the programs lack a logical end point.55 Respondents suggest the programs will end when meaningful representation is achieved or when students receive the educational benefits of diversity, but these measures amount to racial balancing or are standardless.56
The 25-year expectation in Grutter was not a perpetual license, and periodic review cannot make unconstitutional conduct constitutional.57 Harvard concedes it has not set a sunset date, and UNC has not set forth a proposed time period to end the practice.
The admissions programs are not narrowly tailored because they employ race as a negative, involve stereotyping, and lack a meaningful end point.58
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Justice Thomas explained that the Fourteenth Amendment's equality guarantee applied to members of all races from the beginning.59 The Slaughter-House Cases and Strauder v. West Virginia made this clear.60 The earliest interpretations of the Amendment evidenced its commitment to equal rights for all citizens regardless of skin color.61 History has vindicated Justice Harlan's view in Plessy that the Constitution is color-blind.62
The antisubordination view that the Amendment forbids only laws that hurt but not help blacks lacks any basis in the original meaning.63 Race-based government measures during the 1860s and 1870s to remedy state-enforced slavery were not inconsistent with the colorblind Constitution.64 But the current programs take no account of ancestry and likely discriminate against some of the very groups previously disadvantaged.65
Joined by Justice Thomas
Justice Gorsuch emphasized that Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 contains terms as powerful as they are easy to understand.66 No person shall on the ground of race be excluded from participation in or denied the benefits of any program receiving federal financial assistance.67 The key phrases subjected to discrimination and on the ground of mean that Title VI forbids a recipient of federal funds from intentionally treating one person worse than another similarly situated person because of race. Harvard and UNC are recipients of federal funds and intentionally treat some applicants worse than others at least in part because of race.
The statute does not ask how much a recipient discriminates or scrutinize motives.68 It prohibits the intentional use of race to disadvantage any individual.69
Whether Harvard's and UNC's admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment?70
Because the programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, they cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.71 Nothing in the Constitution prohibits universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability the applicant can contribute.72
Yes. The admissions programs fail each of the strict-scrutiny criteria.73 They do not operate in a manner sufficiently measurable to permit judicial review.74 They use race as a negative and as a stereotype.75
They lack a logical end point.76 At the same time, the programs may consider an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life when that discussion is tied to a quality of character or unique ability.77 Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual's identity is the color of their skin rather than challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned.78 The Nation's constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.79
Harvard's and UNC's admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.80
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Joined by Justice Kagan And Justice Jackson
Justice Sotomayor explained that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality that can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not and has never been colorblind.81 Brown v. Board of Education recognized the constitutional necessity of racially integrated schools.82 For 45 years the Court extended Brown's transformative legacy to higher education, allowing colleges to consider race in a limited way for the limited purpose of promoting the educational benefits of racial diversity.83
The programs at issue here are a direct extension of that legacy.84 The majority's decision rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress, cementing a superficial rule of colorblindness in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.85
Joined by Justice Sotomayor And Justice Kagan
Justice Jackson wrote that race-linked gaps in health, wealth, and well-being were created in the distant past but have been passed down to the present day through the generations.86 Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which the country falls short of actualizing the self-evident truth that all are created equal.87 UNC's holistic review program pursues a righteous end because it is defined by the Constitution itself.88
The end is the maintenance of freedom.89 The majority's judgment stunts the generational project that America's universities are attempting and launches a dismally misinformed sociological experiment that will impede the collective progress toward true equality.90