In a 6-3 decision, and a huge victory for common sense, the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at universities. 
The Wall Street Journal reports Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action in College Admissions
The Supreme Court found it unconstitutional to consider race in university admissions, eliminating the principal tool the nation’s most selective schools have used to diversify their campuses. The ruling’s ramifications will likely extend beyond universities to recast the role of racial preferences in America.
University officials have insisted no substitute for racial preferences exists that can ensure that a representative share of minority applicants—particularly Black students—gains admission to selective institutions.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the court, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite,” he wrote.
Victory For, Not Against Affirmative Action
I think the WSJ title is logically backward except by common misinterpretation of the original intent.
Affirmative Action should mean an equal chance for everyone based on skills, not race. Historically that had not been the case. Minorities were routinely discriminated against based on race. Affirmative Action meant to reverse that, and did.
Over time, however, Affirmative Action morphed into priorities for one one set of minorities, notably blacks, at the expense of other minorities, especially Asians, but also males, and whites. How does that affirm anything but prioritized discrimination?
The Supreme Court righted a wrong and by a nice majority as well. Justice is served, finally.
As an African American woman who has worked in Admissions/Recruitment for over 30 years, I have never heard of anyone using race as a criteria for admissions. Students who attend Ivy League Universities attend for power, prestige, pedigree, wealth, social and political connections. It really doesn’t have anything to do with education. It is the equivalent of belonging to a $500,000 a year country club.
Most institutions use up to 60% of their available slots on their legacy students and rest go to athletics. Very little is left for the really smart bears.Because that’s not what the Harvard’s Yale’s and Princetons are really about. They sell access to money and power.
Case in point,,my daughter was offered a fully funded scholarship to the U.S.Naval Academy after high school. She declined it to attend an Ivy League University. She said that it would look better on her resume. What my husband and I found extremely ironic is that we have a biracial daughter. All of the biracial kids at her high school got accepted at elite colleges. It was the same year that Obama got elected .
It was a fashion statement. Everyone decided that they needed one..
And yes it is extremely stupid
Finally, equality under the law.
Go watch the Adam Corolla / Gavin Newsome interview on utube 10 years ago and then try again to make an argument for affirmative actions.
Wise decision.
Racism is everywhere youll never get rid of it. Race/ gender/ religion/ nationality/ .
guess if your gonna set quotas on color or whatever make it mirror say the last census. Its prob time to let it slide and see how things shake out. At the same time i kind of feel this is being made a bigger deal than it is for political purposes. The republicans are losing their base. Because their polices dont benefit the majority of their voters.
I suspect democrats may be in for a huge surprise when many of the Hispanics they’re bringing in end up having conservative values. Not too long ago, like in the 60s, it was the deep south that was the democrats stronghold. When the democrats were overtly racist against blacks. Things change over time.
Businesses and prospective students will coerce colleges to use merit based admissions. Business won’t hire from colleges with relatively poor performing students. Prospective student won’t apply unless there is a good chance the college will get them a good job.
Just wait until the majority of college admissions are Asian, Indian or other, based on merit. There are going to be some howls when that happens! I have popcorn ready!
They’re less than 7% of the US population, whites are 76% of the US population, black 14%
More likely we’ll see elite college admit classes around 30% asian, 67% white, 3% other. I’m white and ok with that. It should primarily be driven by merit. I’m ok with “adversity,” things like poor, both parents not having gone to college, only 1 parent in the household, coming from a crappy school district (short term, you could use some of that as a proxy to almost get your race-based results — colleges are/were being stubborn about that).
Note that colleges can still discriminate based on geographic location… they could limit Seattle and California admissions to reduce the number of Asian admits. It’d be totally legal (won’t surprise me if we see it).
Non Asian kids will be forced to work harder. The end result will be we’ll have smarter harder working kids. Seems like a good thing.
“In a 6-3 decision, and a huge victory for common sense, the Supreme Court struck down race-based admissions at universities.”
Apparently the liberal wing of the Supreme Court has a different version of common sense. That’s not a surprise, of course. Would this liberal wing even admit the Sun rises in the East, if their larger group orthodoxy suggested otherwise? Perhaps we’ll see this exact issue come before the court, not only as a legal test, but also a common sense test.
Justice Thomas strong written rejection of Justice Jackson’s written minority opinion, was a classic takedown and a worthwhile read. If a real fight, it would have been stopped in seconds.
Among some of the winners in today’s ruling, include the many Asian youth who regularly scored in the 98 and 99 percentiles, only to be rejected by the “prestigious” universities because their Asian percentage quotas had already been satisfied.
Yet another party line decision. Getting to be pretty common.
Well said Mish!
Wow! The Supremes decided that institutional racism is wrong!
Ok, so no lower bench marks for athletes, legacy, minorities or international students?
If this is correct and they follow the law, –
1) then high level NCAA sports are done
2) wealthy international students with nearly perfect GPAs, SATs and a two page resume of community involvements will occupy 80% of most selective academic programs in US.
Hope we at least give them a greencard to stay after they graduate or you will see a massive talent drain in the next decade.
I don’t think you understand the ruling.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote…
Which justices didn’t want to end racial discrimination? Which political party were they nominated by?
The 3 democrats.
They don’t seem to get that the SCs job is to determine whether or not something is supported by laws and legal precedent. Not to try to change the country to be the way they want it to be.
Perhaps it makes more sense when phrased as,
… the SCs job is to determine whether or not laws, legal outcomes, and legal precedent are supported by the US Constitution.
apparently, the three dissenters wanted to retain preferences for some citizens, at the expense of other citizens, on the basis of race.
Mish’s view along with everyone’s in the comments confirm to me that this is a great place. Congrats to everyone here for being good humans.
Racism still remains and affects whether or not merit is the standard. Systemically the policy answer is still always an aspect of the natural philosophical concept of grace.
Racism will always exist because it’s not illegal to be a racists. It’s only illegal when people are hurt financially and physically. Choosing skin color over merit is financially harming to people with real skills.
Imagine telling the top QB in the NFL draft sorry. You are amazing but this guy with darker skin with less merit is the pick. NO! This is wrong. Nothing good will ever come out of it long term. It’s a horrible policy and must stopped before it destroys society of rewarding people based off of Crayon colors.
We are quickly moving toward thought crimes–for example, merely thinking about overthrowing the government will soon be a crime. Likely reported by Alexa, making racist comments within your own house, or not using the right pronoun will be factors in your social credit score.
Harvard is a private college. Its chosen admission policies shouldn’t answer to the federal government. Extending federal regulatory powers into private decision making has taken us down a slippery slope toward totalitarianism. I don’t believe that avoiding regulation should mean taking the difficult road that Hillsdale takes – foreswearing any public support, however indirect. That road, for many institutions, would be a path to extinction.
As a public university UNC must play by an entirely different set of rules.
I don’t agree. How would you feel if the post office decided to only hire white men? They’re a private company.
Poor example. The Board of Governors of the Post Office is appointed by the President of the United States. Under Art 1, Sec 8 of the Constitution, only Congress has the power to establish post offices. The employees of the Postal Service are considered to be government employees.
Most large universities are pseudo government also. They depend heavily on federal money. Same as the post office.
And postal workers are not federal employees.
Most larger colleges, such as Harvard, get about 1/3rd of their income from federal research grants. So, in that significant respect, they are public colleges.
I’m glad the SC decided this way. My son had a 1580 on the SAT, 4.0s in too many AP classes to count, brilliant recommendations, and a 3.95 GPA, in a brutal course of study from an elite private boarding school. Didn’t get in anywhere, not even Rice or Northwestern. Why? Racism. Because on paper he looks like a rich white kid. White is correct, rich is not, he got a 95% scholarship.
The deal is, colleges use early admission/decision to recruit the students they really want. Regular admissions are for ‘diversity’.
In the end the headmaster got the university president on the phone and told him to admit my son. Yes, headmasters of some schools do get put thru to presidents of major colleges when they call.
96.59% of Harvard’s applicants are rejected. There is no system and no court on this planet that can make 3.41% an equitable acceptance rate. For decades now the Supreme Court has waded into -actually created – this mess. Even so the current membership of the court is sharply divided. The lawyers and judges have in this decision made a bigger swamp of the law, and even as we comment Harvard has already indicated that it has a method to circumvent the decision without changing the composition of its student body. I do think that Harvard has a legal obligation to reveal its admission criteria to its applicants, as any private business has common law obligations not to misrepresent itself to its customers. But that’s where the legal obligations should end for Harvard. UNC is a different matter.
This is tantamount to saying no federal law should apply to private organizations.
If admissions are to be ‘blind’, then base them on specific objective performance measures or use random selection. Also, each applicant gets a ‘number,’ with no mention of age, race, gender, sex preference, religion, national origin….
Your second paragraph illustrates my point about the slippery slope to totalitarianism: “each applicant gets a ‘number,’ with no mention of age, race, gender, sex preference, religion, national origin….” That idea is right out of Orwell’s 1984.
It’s tantamount to saying “private businesses should be able to discriminate based on race, sex and whatever if they want.”
Except that we have laws that say you can’t discriminate based on race (or sex), and courts at every level have upheld those laws. This ruling is consistent with precedent, even if the libertarian in some of us oppose the laws on principle.
Would your “hands off private institutions” logic also apply to private businesses? For example, can a movie theater deny entrance to hispanics?
Harvard receives $550 million in research and development grants that fuel 40 different departments yearly and has a $50 billion endowment. Someone described it as a Hedge fund with a school attached. The Supreme Court Grove City case in the 80’s expanded federal rules to schools who receive no research grant monies, but whose students elect to use financial aid there.
Non-elite schools are desperately dependent on student federal financial aid and loans to fund the institution. They are pay-as-you-go institutions. If schools are strictly private and take no federal monies, directly or indirectly, they are exempt from these laws and regulations. Some schools take no money from the government and are free to do as they please. Harvard has long gorged at the federal trough and is “private” in name only.
link to deanclancy.com
link to en.wikipedia.org
Biden stated admission should be based off of how much adversity one endured. Congrats then to all Congo cobalt miners. They will be put at the top of the list. It’s really hard work and most of it is child labor. About time…meh.
The Asian kids who are forced to study 5 hours every night by their parents suffer a lot of adversity. Even if it’s not readily apparent.
Hey, hey! Cut Biden some slack. He was never the brightest crayon in the box and now he’s semi-senile. Now, that’s adversity! He deserves to be president because of that.
“Proposition 209 (also known as the California Civil Rights Initiative or CCRI) is a California ballot proposition which, upon approval in November 1996, amended the state constitution to prohibit state governmental institutions from considering race, sex, or ethnicity, specifically in the areas of public employment, public contracting, and public education. Modeled on the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the California Civil Rights Initiative was authored by two California academics, Glynn Custred and Tom Wood. It was the first electoral test of affirmative action policies in North America. It passed with 55% in favor to 45% opposed. ”
link to en.wikipedia.org
Affirmative Action should mean an equal chance for everyone based on skills, not race.
Well it’s simple then….entrance requirements will now consist of an exam on ebonics, woke level vocabulary, familiarity with hip hop legends, and such.
Ultimately, it doesn’t matter, I wrote a comment on the last post that there aren’t enough high school students to sustain all the universities. My employer has some sort of arrangement with a prestigious uni and they were offering GMAT waivers and 50% off all graduate degrees for employees – very telling on where higher ed is these days.
Higher ed isn’t worth much these days because literally anyone and everyone can have it if they want it (ie there are plenty of cheap online MBAs if you just want an MBA listed on your resume).
The sooner a bunch of places close, the better. 90% of the jobs in America don’t require a college degree or better and getting kids into the working world right out of high school as apprentices etc would benefit America a lot more than wasting 3-4 prime working years of their life pursuing useless degrees and racking up debt while doing so.
Actually 44% of jobs require a degree according to this article.
link to finance.yahoo.com
It’s down from 2017 when 51% required degrees but only because the labor situation is getting desperate. I suspect it will be down to 40% or less by 2025.
I would agree for liberal arts degrees, but some science and technology education is required for entry level high tech jobs. And medical doctors and lawyers need to be educated.
This ruling clarifies the Bakke v. California case from the 1970s. The opinions of the justices had gibberish all over the place with no set ruling in place.
link to oyez.org
Right now, I would believe that university admission offices have a way around this new 6-3 ruling as many of them no longer require standard placement test scores for admittance.
Mish, any chance we can go back to using Disqus for Comments?
I found a lot of value in seeing what Comments your other readers Liked.
Disqus is out – but we can add likes – Will ask
Thank you for taking the time to look into it Mish.
You have some fantastic Comments from your other Readers and for me, being able to Sort the Comments by Likes (or Upvotes like on Reddit) really helped me separate the wheat from the chaff.
Most private universities have a “legacy” component to the admissions process, that’s essentially a bonus for being white and rich. Maybe they can be sued to get that thrown out since it is not based on merit.
Sure. Why not. That would be a better way than Affirmative Action.
You mean George W Bush’s C average at Yale isn’t what got him into Harvard Business School?
Legacy admissions have been dropped from many private universities (such as MIT).
At universities such as Harvard, they’ve evolved to “legacy donor” admissions. Having went there isn’t enough to get your kids in, you also have to be a donor. Even that’s not a sure thing. I knew an admissions officer at Harvard B school and asked her about this. Her comment was, “if we deny admission to the child of an alum donor, there’s some special handling involved.” i.e., they don’t receive a letter, in most cases, they receive a visit with an apologetic explanation. Note: this was circa 2002, I don’t know how it has evolved since.
Legacy is about the money. That so far benefits whites that HAVE MONEY. But you could be a black legacy applicant with a pile of money and it would benefit them too. Example: George W. Bush was braindead but his family had money and they bought his way into Yale
Regarding those rich and white males, it has been my experience that happens in admissions at the undergraduate level is not what happens at the graduate level.
Legacy means donations.
Legacy admissions may represent unfairness, but it does not represent unconstitutional racial discrimination that violates the 14th amendment.
I agree affirmative action is no longer needed. If anything now, blacks have an advantage. Many are hired simply to meet diversity quotas.
I totally agree with the decision. The only way to fight racism is to fight it across the board. Otherwise, if you fight racism with racism, then you have to fight that racism with racism. It will never end.
In Australia there will be referendum for the rights of Aborigines in 2023.
This is democracy. Their rights is at the mercy of White majority.
They were systemically genocided ( only 2% of population left ) and oppressed. They are alcoholic, poor, depressed and think inferior. They are long forgotten as citizens.The affirmative action is needed to raise the living standard of these people for many years.
ditto – – – for Red Indian in USA. They are long forgotten. See – – how they are neglected.
ditto – – – in Argentina, Brazil etc.
My daughter is pushing half Native American. It helped her get into UCLA, and law school. She did bust her butt in school and was the editor in chief of her law review journal at her law school. Sadly tho I’ve seen a lot of unprepared minority students waste the opportunity and be part of the group of university dropouts. Regardless tho I agree with the SCOTUS decision, it was time to can it.
Nonsense. The vast majority of deaths of Aboriginals in Australia were from diseases the white man carried. Today, Aboriginals live twice as long as their forefathers, and they have a standard of living that they couldn’t have even imagined, let alone achieved for themselves. They are the only section of society that are not required to work, which could be part of their current social problems, which include a crime rate about ten times higher than average.
The referendum is not about their “rights”, it is to decide whether they should be given privileged access to political influence. Support for a YES vote is collapsing as more and more people correctly see it as institutionalised racism with massive potential risks and complications.
I thought that I would never see this day. A measure that was supposed to be temporary but had become permanent has been struck down. Sanity is breaking out.
Indeed. There was a time when it was needed but the Supreme Court has recognized that time is past.
The current Supreme Court justices have been doing great work over the past couple of years.
Definitely
And now the universities activate plans B, C, D… Z to make sure they can still do this but that it won’t look like they’re still doing this
Possibly, but I don’t think colleges were voluntarily onboard with race-based admissions. Admit it, race-based admissions get you students who normally wouldn’t be up to normal standards. Colleges don’t like that.
Colleges, especially private ones, should do what they want. BUT you should not be able to get a Federally-backed student loan to go to a non-compliance school period. Let’s face it colleges are shit anyway. Just go to Google University