The justice did not mince words in her dissent of the conservative supermajority’s decision striking down affirmative action in college admissions.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, associate justice of the US Supreme Court, following a State of the Union address at the US Capitol on Feb. 7, 2023. (Photographer: Jacquelyn Martin / Bloomberg / AP)
In a devastating blow to the fight for racial justice in the United States, the US Supreme Court on Friday eliminated affirmative action in higher education. In her dissenting opinion, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson called out her conservative colleagues for “interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems.” Read her dissent in its entirety below.
Gulf-sized race-based gaps exist with respect to the health, wealth, and well-being of American citizens. They were created in the distant past, but have indisputably been passed down to the present day through the generations. Every moment these gaps persist is a moment in which this great country falls short of actualizing one of its foundational principles—the “self-evident” truth that all of us are created equal. Yet, today, the Court determines that holistic admissions programs like the one that the University of North Carolina (UNC) has operated, consistent with Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003), are a problem with respect to achievement of that aspiration, rather than a viable solution (as has long been evident to historians, sociologists, and policymakers alike).
Justice Sotomayor has persuasively established that nothing in the Constitution or Title VI prohibits institutions from taking race into account to ensure the racial diversity of admits in higher education. I join her opinion without qualification. I write separately to expound upon the universal benefits of considering race in this context, in response to a suggestion that has permeated this legal action from the start. Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) has maintained, both subtly and overtly, that it is unfair for a college’s admissions process to consider race as one factor in a holistic review of its applicants.
This contention blinks both history and reality in ways too numerous to count. But the response is simple: Our country has never been colorblind. Given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in America, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicants fails to acknowledge the well-documented “intergenerational transmission of inequality” that still plagues our citizenry.
THE NATION
