The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against race-conscious programs at universities, handing a win to a group that argued that the institutions shouldn’t consider race in evaluating applications for admission.
The high court, which has a conservative majority, had been expected to return a decision that wasn’t favorable for affirmative action.
The admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina that the court considered “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” wrote Chief Justice John Roberts in the majority’s opinion, referring to a key clause in the U.S. Constitution.
“Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”
He was joined in the opinion by Justices Samuel Alito, Amy Coney Barrett, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Clarence Thomas.
In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that “limited use of race has helped equalize educational opportunities for all students of every race and background and has improved racial diversity on college campuses.”
“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” she added.
This story originally appeared on Marketwatch
