On June 29, the Supreme Court released its much-anticipated decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, ruling that both Harvard and the University of North Carolina’s consideration of race in their admissions process is unconstitutional.
This landmark decision, which effectively eliminates the practice of affirmative action in university admissions, is another major win for constitutionalism from the Supreme Court.
Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion that “eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.” He concluded, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”
INCOMING BROWN U. STUDENT: THIS RULING WILL MAKE OUR COUNTRY BETTER
While Asian Americans have been the primary focus of many studies, another recent study by Georgetown University suggests that if elite colleges were to admit students solely on the merit of their test scores, every single minority group’s share of the student body would decline — except for Whites, who would go up by nearly 10%.
Americans of all stripes should abhor this sort of outright racial discrimination from our public institutions. Our nation — while imperfect — has undergone noble yet arduous struggles to rid ourselves of discrimination based on the color of one’s skin.
Race-based affirmative action not only pulls down certain groups, but it also reinforces the harmful notion that minority students are less qualified to be successful than their peers and cannot achieve excellence on their own merits without built-in institutional advantages.
When you are in surgery, it is not about who can check the most boxes — it’s about who can get the job done in the best way possible. In this sense, putting aside merit and emphasizing external qualities like race can put actual lives in jeopardy, and harm the progress of entire industries at large.
“The View” co-host Whoopi Goldberg criticizes the Supreme Court’s ruling of affirmative action. (Screenshot/ABC/"The View")
This decision to overturn affirmative action and outlaw race-based discrimination is a major victory from a constitutional and legal perspective, affirming the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause and the prohibitions on racial discrimination in the Civil Rights Act.
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