NYU law professor Melissa Murray was the acting dean at the University of California Berkeley in 20 when a state referendum barred the use of race in college admission decisions. Indeed, the reality is that in those places where affirmative action has been eliminated, there has been a severe drop in minority, and particularly, African American, admissions. 'It feels tragic,' said Columbia University President Bollinger, who has for 30 years been a leading proponent of affirmative action programs. Roberts, for his part, pointed to the court's 2003 decision reaffirming the constitutionality of affirmative action programs, noting that Justice Sandra Day O'Connor, writing for the court at the time, had suggested that there would have to be an end at some future point. all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law.' 'While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold our enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles that. Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution.'Īs he has done before, Thomas, the second black justice appointed to the court, reiterated his long-held view that affirmative action imposes a stigma on minorities. Thursday's decision, he wrote, 'sees the universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences. Law Here are the major Supreme Court decisions we're still waiting for this term 'Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.' 'Many universities have for too ncluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin,' he wrote. It ends the ability of colleges and universities - public and private - to do what most say they still need to do: consider race as one of many factors in deciding which of the qualified applicants is to be admitted.Ĭhief Justice John Roberts, a longtime critic of affirmative action programs, wrote the decision for the court majority, saying that the nation's colleges and universities must use colorblind criteria in admissions. The decision reverses decades of precedent upheld over the years by narrow Supreme Court majorities that included Republican-appointed justices. In a decision divided along ideological lines, the six-justice conservative supermajority invalidated admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country.

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