U.S. Supreme Court tackles Harvard and UNC race-conscious admissions

By Nate Raymond and Andrew Chung

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The U.S. Supreme Court is set to hear arguments on Monday in two major cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that could imperil decades-old affirmative action policies that factor race into student admissions to boost Black and Hispanic enrollment on American campuses.

The arguments are set to begin at 10 a.m. (1400 GMT) in appeals by a group founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum of lower court rulings upholding programs used at the two prestigious schools to foster student diversity. The court confronts this divisive issue four months after its major rulings curtailing abortion rights and widening gun rights.

The court’s 6-3 conservative majority is expected to be sympathetic toward the challenges to Harvard and UNC.

The cases give the court an opportunity to overturn its prior rulings allowing race-conscious admissions policies. They also give it a chance to embrace an interpretation favored by conservatives of the U.S. Constitution’s 14th Amendment promise of equal protection under the law that would bar governments and other institutions from using race-conscious policies – even those crafted to benefit people who have endured discrimination.

The suits were filed separately against the two schools in 2014. One accused Harvard of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which bars discrimination based on race, color or national origin under any program or activity receiving federal financial assistance. The other accused UNC violating the 14th Amendment.

Blum’s group said UNC discriminates against white and Asian American applicants and Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants.

The universities have said they use race as only one factor in a host of individualized evaluations for admission without quotas – permissible under Supreme Court precedents – and that curbing the consideration of race would result in a significant drop in the number of students from under-represented groups.

Many institutions of higher education place a premium on achieving a diverse student population not simply to remedy racial inequity and exclusion in American life but to bring a range of perspectives onto campuses.

Blum’s group told the justices in court papers that the Constitution requires colorblind admissions, quoting a famous line by conservative Chief Justice John Roberts from a 2007 ruling: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.”

It added that “any marginal loss in ‘cross-racial understanding’ could be remedied with alternatives far narrower than racial preferences, like making students take a class on the topic.”

The two schools and President Joe Biden’s administration, backing them, said categorically banning any consideration of an individual’s race would be inconsistent with equal protection.

UNC said there is a difference between a racist policy like segregation that separates people based on race and race-conscious policies that bring students together. The challengers’ arguments to equate the two “trivialize the grievous legal and moral wrongs of segregation,” the U.S. Justice Department said in a brief.

Affirmative action has withstood Supreme Court scrutiny for decades, including in a 2016 ruling involving a white student, backed by Blum, who challenged the University of Texas after being rejected for admission, though the justices have narrowed its application.

The Supreme Court has shifted rightward since 2016 and now includes three justices who dissented in the University of Texas case and three new appointees by former Republican President Donald Trump.

That shift has experts predicting that the conservative justices may be poised once again to reverse a decades-old precedent just as they did in June when they overturned the 1973 Roe v. Wade ruling recognizing a constitutional right to abortion.

Blum’s group asked the Supreme Court to overturn a 2003 Supreme Court ruling in a case called Grutter v. Bollinger involving the University of Michigan Law School that held that colleges could consider race as one factor in the admissions process because of the compelling interest of creating a diverse student body.

The Supreme Court first upheld affirmative action in college admissions in a 1978 ruling in a case called Regents of the University of California v. Bakke that held that actions to achieve diversity were permissible but racial quotas were not.

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