June 30, 2023
Victoria Pickering, Flickr.
On June 30, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down the race-based affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard College, holding that the challenged programs lacked sufficiently focused and measurable objectives justifying the use of race in admissions, employed race in a negative manner given the zero-sum nature of admissions, involved unlawful racial stereotyping, and lacked meaningful end points.
Read more about the cases and the Supreme Court's decision here:
Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina
and
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard
To revisit some of the Court's prior decisions on affirmative action in college and university admissions, check out the Clearinghouse entries in University of California Regents v. Bakke, Gratz v. Bollinger, and Grutter v. Bollinger.