# Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College/Opinion of Justice Sotomayor

SUPREME COURT OF THE UNITED STATES
Nos. 20–1199 and 21–707
STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC., PETITIONER 20–1199v.20–1199 PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FIRST CIRCUIT
STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC., PETITIONER 21–707v.21–707 UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA, ET AL.
ON WRIT OF CERTIORARI BEFORE JUDGMENT TO THE UNITED STATES COURT OF APPEALS FOR THE FOURTH CIRCUIT [June 29, 2023]
Justice Sotomayor, with whom Justice Kagan and Justice Jackson join, dissenting.
The Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment enshrines a guarantee of racial equality. The Court long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind. In Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483 (1954), the Court recognized the constitutional necessity of racially integrated schools in light of the ​harm inflicted by segregation and the “importance of education to our democratic society.” Id., at 492–495. For 45 years, the Court extended Brown’s transformative legacy to the context of higher education, allowing colleges and universities to consider race in a limited way and for the limited purpose of promoting the important benefits of racial diversity. This 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. Although progress has been slow and imperfect, race-conscious college admissions policies have advanced the Constitution’s guarantee of equality and have promoted Brown’s vision of a Nation with more inclusive schools.
Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.
I A
Equal educational opportunity is a prerequisite to achieving racial equality in our Nation. From its founding, the United States was a new experiment in a republican form of government where democratic participation and the capacity to engage in self-rule were vital. At the same time, American society was structured around the profitable institution that was slavery, which the original Constitution ​protected. The Constitution initially limited the power of Congress to restrict the slave trade, Art. I, §9, cl. 1, accorded Southern States additional electoral power by counting three-fifths of their enslaved population in apportioning congressional seats, §2, cl. 3, and gave enslavers the right to retrieve enslaved people who escaped to free States, Art. IV, §2, cl. 3. Because a foundational pillar of slavery was the racist notion that Black people are a subordinate class with intellectual inferiority, Southern States sought to ensure slavery’s longevity by prohibiting the education of Black people, whether enslaved or free. See H. Williams, Self-Taught: African American Education in Slavery and Freedom 7, 203–213 (2005) (Self-Taught). Thus, from this Nation’s birth, the freedom to learn was neither colorblind nor equal.
With time, and at the tremendous cost of the Civil War, abolition came. More than two centuries after the first African enslaved persons were forcibly brought to our shores, Congress adopted the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which abolished “slavery” and “involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime.” §1. “Like all great historical transformations,” emancipation was a movement, “not a single event” owed to any single individual, institution, or political party. E. Foner, The Second Founding 21, 51–54 (2019) (The Second Founding).
The fight for equal educational opportunity, however, was a key driver. Literacy was an “instrument of resistance and liberation.” Self-Taught 8. Education “provided the means to write a pass to freedom” and “to learn of abolitionist activities.” Id., at 7. It allowed enslaved Black people “to disturb the power relations between master and slave,” which “fused their desire for literacy with their desire for freedom.” Ibid. Put simply, “[t]he very feeling of inferiority which slavery forced upon [Black people] fathered an intense desire to rise out of their condition by means of education.” W. E. B. Du Bois, Black Reconstruction in America ​1860–1880, p. 638 (1935); see J. Anderson, The Education of Blacks in the South 1860–1935, p. 7 (1988). Black Americans thus insisted, in the words of Frederick Douglass, “that in a country governed by the people, like ours, education of the youth of all classes is vital to its welfare, prosperity, and to its existence.” Address to the People of the United States (1883), in 4 P. Foner, The Life and Writings of Frederick Douglass 386 (1955). Black people’s yearning for freedom of thought, and for a more perfect Union with educational opportunity for all, played a crucial role during the Reconstruction era.
Yet emancipation marked the beginning, not the end, of that era. Abolition alone could not repair centuries of racial subjugation. Following the Thirteenth Amendment’s ratification, the Southern States replaced slavery with “a system of ‘laws which imposed upon [Black people] onerous disabilities and burdens, and curtailed their rights in the pursuit of life, liberty, and property to such an extent that their freedom was of little value.’ ” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 390 (1978) (opinion of Marshall, J.) (quoting Slaughter-House Cases, 16 Wall. 36, 70 (1873)). Those so-called “Black Codes” discriminated against Black people on the basis of race, regardless of whether they had been previously enslaved. See, e.g., 1866 N. C. Sess. Laws pp. 99, 102.
Moreover, the criminal punishment exception in the Thirteenth Amendment facilitated the creation of a new system of forced labor in the South. Southern States expanded their criminal laws, which in turn “permitted involuntary servitude as a punishment” for convicted Black persons. D. Blackmon, Slavery by Another Name: The Re-Enslavement of Black Americans From the Civil War to World War II, pp. 7, 53 (2009) (Slavery by Another Name). States required, for example, that Black people “sign a labor contract to work for a white employer or face prosecution for vagrancy.” The Second Founding 48. State laws ​then forced Black convicted persons to labor in “plantations, mines, and industries in the South.” Id., at 50. This system of free forced labor provided tremendous benefits to Southern whites and was designed to intimidate, subjugate, and control newly emancipated Black people. See Slavery by Another Name 5–6, 53. The Thirteenth Amendment, without more, failed to equalize society.
Congress thus went further and embarked on months of deliberation about additional Reconstruction laws. Those efforts included the appointment of a Committee, the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, “to inquire into the condition of the Confederate States.” Report of the Joint Committee on Reconstruction, S. Rep. No. 112, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 1 (1866) (hereinafter Joint Comm. Rep.). Among other things, the Committee’s Report to Congress documented the “deep-seated prejudice” against emancipated Black people in the Southern States and the lack of a “general disposition to place the colored race, constituting at least two-fifths of the population, upon terms even of civil equality.” Id., at 11. In light of its findings, the Committee proposed amending the Constitution to secure the equality of “rights, civil and political.” Id., at 7.
Congress acted on that recommendation and adopted the Fourteenth Amendment. Proponents of the Amendment declared that one of its key goals was to “protec[t] the black man in his fundamental rights as a citizen with the same shield which it throws over the white man.” Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 2766 (1866) (Cong. Globe) (statement of Sen. Howard). That is, the Amendment sought “to secure to a race recently emancipated, a race that through many generations [was] held in slavery, all the civil rights that the superior race enjoy.” Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 555–556 (1896) (Harlan, J., dissenting) (internal quotation marks omitted).
To promote this goal, Congress enshrined a broad guarantee of equality in the Equal Protection Clause of the ​Amendment. That Clause commands that “[n]o State shall … deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws.” Amdt. 14, §1. Congress chose its words carefully, opting for expansive language that focused on equal protection and rejecting “proposals that would have made the Constitution explicitly color-blind.” A. Kull, The Color-Blind Constitution 69 (1992); see also, e.g., Cong. Globe 1287 (rejecting proposed language providing that “no State … shall … recognize any distinction between citizens … on account of race or color”). This choice makes it clear that the Fourteenth Amendment does not impose a blanket ban on race-conscious policies.
Simultaneously with the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress enacted a number of race-conscious laws to fulfill the Amendment’s promise of equality, leaving no doubt that the Equal Protection Clause permits consideration of race to achieve its goal. One such law was the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, enacted in 1865 and then expanded in 1866, which established a federal agency to provide certain benefits to refugees and newly emancipated freedmen. See Act of Mar. 3, 1865, ch. 90, 13 Stat. 507; Act of July 16, 1866, ch. 200, 14 Stat. 173. For the Bureau, education “was the foundation upon which all efforts to assist the freedmen rested.” E. Foner, Reconstruction: America’s Unfinished Revolution 1863–1877, p. 144 (1988). Consistent with that view, the Bureau provided essential “funding for black education during Reconstruction.” Id., at 97.
Black people were the targeted beneficiaries of the Bureau’s programs, especially when it came to investments in education in the wake of the Civil War. Each year surrounding the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, the Bureau “educated approximately 100,000 students, nearly all of them black,” and regardless of “degree of past disadvantage.” E. Schnapper, Affirmative Action and the Legislative History of the Fourteenth Amendment, 71 Va. L. Rev. ​753, 781 (1985). The Bureau also provided land and funding to establish some of our Nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs). Ibid.; see also Brief for HBCU Leaders et al. as Amici Curiae 13 (HBCU Brief). In 1867, for example, the Bureau provided Howard University tens of thousands of dollars to buy property and construct its campus in our Nation’s capital. 2 O. Howard, Autobiography 397–401 (1907). Howard University was designed to provide “special opportunities for a higher education to the newly enfranchised of the south,” but it was available to all Black people, “whatever may have been their previous condition.” Bureau Refugees, Freedmen and Abandoned Lands, Sixth Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen 60 (July 1, 1868). The Bureau also “expended a total of $407,752.21 on black colleges, and only $3,000 on white colleges” from 1867 to 1870. Schnapper, 71 Va. L. Rev., at 798, n. 149.
Indeed, contemporaries understood that the Freedmen’s Bureau Act benefited Black people. Supporters defended the law by stressing its race-conscious approach. See, e.g., Cong. Globe 632 (statement of Rep. Moulton) (“[T]he true object of this bill is the amelioration of the condition of the colored people”); Joint Comm. Rep. 11 (reporting that “the Union men of the south” declared “with one voice” that the Bureau’s efforts “protect[ed] the colored people”). Opponents argued that the Act created harmful racial classifications that favored Black people and disfavored white Americans. See, e.g., Cong. Globe 397 (statement of Sen. Willey) (the Act makes “a distinction on account of color between the two races”), 544 (statement of Rep. Taylor) (the Act is ​“legislation for a particular class of the blacks to the exclusion of all whites”), App. to Cong. Globe, 39th Cong., 1st Sess., 69–70 (statement of Rep. Rousseau) (“You raise a spirit of antagonism between the black race and the white race in our country, and the law-abiding will be powerless to control it”). President Andrew Johnson vetoed the bill on the basis that it provided benefits “to a particular class of citizens,” 6 Messages and Papers of the Presidents 1789–1897, p. 425 (J. Richardson ed. 1897) (Messages & Papers) (A. Johnson to House of Rep. July 16, 1866), but Congress overrode his veto. Cong. Globe 3849–3850. Thus, rejecting those opponents’ objections, the same Reconstruction Congress that passed the Fourteenth Amendment eschewed the concept of colorblindness as sufficient to remedy inequality in education.
Congress also debated and passed the Civil Rights Act of 1866 contemporaneously with the Fourteenth Amendment. The goal of that Act was to eradicate the Black Codes enacted by Southern States following ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment. See id., at 474. Because the Black Codes focused on race, not just slavery-related status, the Civil Rights Act explicitly recognized that white citizens enjoyed certain rights that non-white citizens did not. Section 1 of the Act provided that all persons “of every race and color … shall have the same right[s]” as those “enjoyed by white citizens.” Act of Apr. 9, 1866, 14 Stat. 27. Similarly, Section 2 established criminal penalties for subjecting racial minorities to “different punishment … by reason of … color or race, than is prescribed for the punishment of white persons.” Ibid. In other words, the Act was not colorblind. By using white citizens as a benchmark, the law classified by race and took account of the privileges enjoyed only by white people. As he did with the Freedmen’s Bureau Act, President Johnson vetoed the Civil Rights Act in part because he viewed it as providing Black citizens with special treatment. See Messages and Papers 408, 413 (the Act is ​designed “to afford discriminating protection to colored persons,” and its “distinction of race and color … operate[s] in favor of the colored and against the white race”). Again, Congress overrode his veto. Cong. Globe 1861. In fact, Congress reenacted race-conscious language in the Civil Rights Act of 1870, two years after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Act of May 31, 1870, §16, 16 Stat. 144, where it remains today, see 42 U. S. C. §§1981(a) and 1982 (Rev. Stat. §§1972, 1978).
Congress similarly appropriated federal dollars explicitly and solely for the benefit of racial minorities. For example, it appropriated money for “ ‘the relief of destitute colored women and children,’ ” without regard to prior enslavement. Act of July 28, 1866, 14 Stat. 317. Several times during and after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress also made special appropriations and adopted special protections for the bounty and prize money owed to “colored soldiers and sailors” of the Union Army. 14 Stat. 357, Res. No. 46, June 15, 1866; Act of Mar. 3, 1869, ch. 122, 15 Stat. 301; Act of Mar. 3, 1873, 17 Stat. 528. In doing so, it rebuffed objections to these measures as “class legislation” “applicable to colored people and not … to the white people.” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 1st Sess., 79 (1867) (statement of Sen. Grimes). This history makes it “inconceivable” that race-conscious college admissions are unconstitutional. Bakke, 438 U. S., at 398 (opinion of Marshall, J.).
B
The Reconstruction era marked a transformational point in the history of American democracy. Its vision of equal opportunity leading to an equal society “was short-lived,” however, “with the assistance of this Court.” Id., at 391. In a series of decisions, the Court “sharply curtailed” the “substantive protections” of the Reconstruction Amendments and the Civil Rights Acts. Id., at 391–392 (collecting cases). That endeavor culminated with the Court’s shameful decision in Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537 (1896), which established that “equality of treatment” exists “when the races are provided substantially equal facilities, even though these facilities be separate.” Brown, 347 U. S., at 488. Therefore, with this Court’s approval, government-enforced segregation and its concomitant destruction of equal opportunity became the constitutional norm and infected every sector of our society, from bathrooms to military units and, crucially, schools. See Bakke, 438 U. S., at 393–394 (opinion of Marshall, J.); see also generally R. Rothstein, The Color of Law 17–176 (2017) (discussing various federal policies that promoted racial segregation).
In a powerful dissent, Justice Harlan explained in Plessy that the Louisiana law at issue, which authorized segregation in railway carriages, perpetuated a “caste” system. 163 U. S., at 559–560. Although the State argued that the law “prescribe[d] a rule applicable alike to white and colored citizens,” all knew that the law’s purpose was not “to exclude white persons from railroad cars occupied by blacks,” but “to exclude colored people from coaches occupied by or assigned to white persons.” Id., at 557. That is, the law “proceed[ed] on the ground that colored citizens are so inferior and degraded that they cannot be allowed to sit in public coaches occupied by white citizens.” Id., at 560. Although “[t]he white race deems itself to be the dominant race … in prestige, in achievements, in education, in wealth, and in power,” Justice Harlan explained, there is “no superior, ​dominant, ruling class of citizens” in the eyes of the law. Id., at 559. In that context, Justice Harlan thus announced his view that “[o]ur constitution is color-blind.” Ibid.
It was not until half a century later, in Brown, that the Court honored the guarantee of equality in the Equal Protection Clause and Justice Harlan’s vision of a Constitution that “neither knows nor tolerates classes among citizens.” Ibid. Considering the “effect[s] of segregation” and the role of education “in the light of its full development and its present place in American life throughout the Nation,” Brown overruled Plessy. 347 U. S., at 492–495. The Brown Court held that “[s]eparate educational facilities are inherently unequal,” and that such racial segregation deprives Black students “of the equal protection of the laws guaranteed by the Fourteenth Amendment.” Id., at 494–495. The Court thus ordered segregated schools to transition to a racially integrated system of public education “with all deliberate speed,” “ordering the immediate admission of [Black children] to schools previously attended only by white children.” Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 301 (1955).
Brown was a race-conscious decision that emphasized the importance of education in our society. Central to the Court’s holding was the recognition that, as Justice Harlan emphasized in Plessy, segregation perpetuates a caste system wherein Black children receive inferior educational opportunities “solely because of their race,” denoting “inferiority as to their status in the community.” 347 U. S., at 494, and n. 10. Moreover, because education is “the very foundation of good citizenship,” segregation in public education harms “our democratic society” more broadly as well. Id., at 493. In light of the harmful effects of entrenched racial subordination on racial minorities and American democracy, Brown recognized the constitutional necessity of a racially integrated system of schools where education is “available to all on equal terms.” Ibid.
​The desegregation cases that followed Brown confirm that the ultimate goal of that seminal decision was to achieve a system of integrated schools that ensured racial equality of opportunity, not to impose a formalistic rule of race-blindness. In Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., 391 U. S. 430 (1968), for example, the Court held that the New Kent County School Board’s “freedom of choice” plan, which allegedly allowed “every student, regardless of race, … ‘freely’ [to] choose the school he [would] attend,” was insufficient to effectuate “the command of [Brown].” Id., at 437, 441–442. That command, the Court explained, was that schools dismantle “well-entrenched dual systems” and transition “to a unitary, nonracial system of public education.” Id., at 435–436. That the board “opened the doors of the former ‘white’ school to [Black] children and the [‘Black’] school to white children” on a race-blind basis was not enough. Id., at 437. Passively eliminating race classifications did not suffice when de facto segregation persisted. Id., at 440–442 (noting that 85% of Black children in the school system were still attending an all-Black school). Instead, the board was “clearly charged with the affirmative duty to take whatever steps might be necessary to convert to a unitary system in which racial discrimination would be eliminated root and branch.” Id., at 437–438. Affirmative steps, this Court held, are constitutionally necessary when mere formal neutrality cannot achieve Brown’s promise of racial equality. See Green, 391 U. S., at 440–442; see also North Carolina Bd. of Ed. v. Swann, 402 U. S. 43, 45–46 (1971) (holding that North Carolina statute that forbade the use of race in school busing “exploits an apparently neutral form to control school assignment plans by directing that they be ‘colorblind’; that requirement, against the background of segregation, would render illusory the promise of Brown”); Dayton Bd. of Ed. v. Brinkman, 443 U. S. 526, 538 (1979) (school board “had to do more than abandon ​its prior discriminatory purpose”; it “had an affirmative responsibility” to integrate); Keyes v. School Dist. No. 1, Denver, 413 U. S. 189, 200 (1973) (“[T]he State automatically assumes an affirmative duty” under Brown to eliminate the vestiges of segregation).
In so holding, this Court’s post-Brown decisions rejected arguments advanced by opponents of integration suggesting that “restor[ing] race as a criterion in the operation of the public schools” was at odds with “the Brown decisions.” Brief for Respondents in Green v. School Bd. of New Kent Cty., O. T. 1967, No. 695, p. 6 (Green Brief). Those opponents argued that Brown only required the admission of Black students “to public schools on a racially nondiscriminatory basis.” Id., at 11 (emphasis deleted). Relying on Justice Harlan’s dissent in Plessy, they argued that the use of race “is improper” because the “ ‘Constitution is colorblind.’ ” Green Brief 6, n. 6 (quoting Plessy, 163 U. S., at 559 (Harlan, J., dissenting)). They also incorrectly claimed that their views aligned with those of the Brown litigators, arguing that the Brown plaintiffs “understood” that Brown’s “mandate” was colorblindness. Green Brief 17. This Court rejected that characterization of “the thrust of Brown.” Green, 391 U. S., at 437. It made clear that indifference to race “is not an end in itself” under that watershed decision. Id., at 440. The ultimate goal is racial equality of opportunity.
Those rejected arguments mirror the Court’s opinion today. The Court claims that Brown requires that students ​be admitted “ ‘on a racially nondiscriminatory basis.’ ” Ante, at 13. It distorts the dissent in Plessy to advance a colorblindness theory. Ante, at 38–39; see also ante, at 22 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“[T]oday’s decision wakes the echoes of Justice John Marshall Harlan [in Plessy]”); ante, at 3 (Thomas, J., concurring) (same). The Court also invokes the Brown litigators, relying on what the Brown “plaintiffs had argued.” Ante, at 12; ante, at 35–36, 39, n. 7 (opinion of Thomas, J.).
If there was a Member of this Court who understood the Brown litigation, it was Justice Thurgood Marshall, who “led the litigation campaign” to dismantle segregation as a civil rights lawyer and “rejected the hollow, race-ignorant conception of equal protection” endorsed by the Court’s ruling today. Brief for NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae 9. Justice Marshall joined the Bakke plurality and “applaud[ed] the judgment of the Court that a university may consider race in its admissions process.” 438 U. S., at 400. In fact, Justice Marshall’s view was that Bakke’s holding should have been even more protective of race-conscious college admissions programs in light of the remedial purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment and the legacy of racial inequality in our society. See id., at 396–402 (arguing that “a class-based remedy” should be constitutionally permissible in light of the hundreds of “years of class-based discrimination against [Black Americans]”). The Court’s recharacterization of Brown is nothing but revisionist history and an affront to the legendary life of Justice Marshall, a great jurist who was a champion of true equal opportunity, not rhetorical flourishes about colorblindness.
C
Two decades after Brown, in Bakke, a plurality of the Court held that “the attainment of a diverse student body” is a “compelling” and “constitutionally permissible goal for ​an institution of higher education.” 438 U. S., at 311–315. Race could be considered in the college admissions process in pursuit of this goal, the plurality explained, if it is one factor of many in an applicant’s file, and each applicant receives individualized review as part of a holistic admissions process. Id., at 316–318.
Since Bakke, the Court has reaffirmed numerous times the constitutionality of limited race-conscious college admissions. First, in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306 (2003), a majority of the Court endorsed the Bakke plurality’s “view that student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify the use of race in university admissions,” 539 U. S., at 325, and held that race may be used in a narrowly tailored manner to achieve this interest, id., at 333–344; see also Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 244, 268 (2003) (“for the reasons set forth [the same day] in Grutter,” rejecting petitioners’ arguments that race can only be considered in college admissions “to remedy identified discrimination” and that diversity is “ ‘too open-ended, ill-defined, and indefinite to constitute a compelling interest’ ”).
Later, in the Fisher litigation, the Court twice reaffirmed that a limited use of race in college admissions is constitutionally permissible if it satisfies strict scrutiny. In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 570 U. S. 297 (2013) (Fisher I), seven Members of the Court concluded that the use of race in college admissions comports with the Fourteenth Amendment if it “is narrowly tailored to obtain the educational benefits of diversity.” Id., at 314, 337. Several years later, in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, 579 U. S. 365, 376 (2016) (Fisher II), the Court upheld the admissions program at the University of Texas under this framework. Id., at 380–388.
Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher are an extension of Brown’s legacy. Those decisions recognize that “ ‘experience lend[s] support to the view that the contribution of diversity is substantial.’ ” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 324 (quoting Bakke, 438 ​U. S., at 313). Racially integrated schools improve cross-racial understanding, “break down racial stereotypes,” and ensure that students obtain “the skills needed in today’s increasingly global marketplace … through exposure to widely diverse people, cultures, ideas, and viewpoints.” 539 U. S., at 330. More broadly, inclusive institutions that are “visibly open to talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity” instill public confidence in the “legitimacy” and “integrity” of those institutions and the diverse set of graduates that they cultivate. Id., at 332. That is particularly true in the context of higher education, where colleges and universities play a critical role in “maintaining the fabric of society” and serve as “the training ground for a large number of our Nation’s leaders.” Id., at 331–332. It is thus an objective of the highest order, a “compelling interest” indeed, that universities pursue the benefits of racial diversity and ensure that “the diffusion of knowledge and opportunity” is available to students of all races. Id., at 328–333.
This compelling interest in student body diversity is grounded not only in the Court’s equal protection jurisprudence but also in principles of “academic freedom,” which “ ‘long [have] been viewed as a special concern of the First Amendment.’ ” Id., at 324 (quoting Bakke, 438 U. S., at 312). In light of “the important purpose of public education and the expansive freedoms of speech and thought associated with the university environment,” this Court’s precedents recognize the imperative nature of diverse student bodies on American college campuses. 539 U. S., at 329. Consistent with the First Amendment, student body diversity allows universities to promote “th[e] robust exchange of ideas which discovers truth out of a multitude of tongues [rather] than through any kind of authoritative selection.” Bakke, 438 U. S., at 312 (internal quotation marks omitted). Indeed, as the Court recently reaffirmed in another ​school case, “learning how to tolerate diverse expressive activities has always been ‘part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society’ ” under our constitutional tradition. Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 29); cf. Khorrami v. Arizona, 598 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 8) (collecting research showing that larger juries are more likely to be racially diverse and “deliberate longer, recall information better, and pay greater attention to dissenting voices”).
In short, for more than four decades, it has been this Court’s settled law that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes a limited use of race in college admissions in service of the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. From Brown to Fisher, this Court’s cases have sought to equalize educational opportunity in a society structured by racial segregation and to advance the Fourteenth Amendment’s vision of an America where racially integrated schools guarantee students of all races the equal protection of the laws.
D
Today, the Court concludes that indifference to race is the only constitutionally permissible means to achieve racial equality in college admissions. That interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is not only contrary to precedent and the entire teachings of our history, see supra, at 2–17, but is also grounded in the illusion that racial inequality was a problem of a different generation. Entrenched racial inequality remains a reality today. That is true for society writ large and, more specifically, for Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC), two institutions with a long history of racial exclusion. Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality.
1
After more than a century of government policies enforcing racial segregation by law, society remains highly segregated. About half of all Latino and Black students attend a racially homogeneous school with at least 75% minority student enrollment. The share of intensely segregated minority schools (i.e., schools that enroll 90% to 100% racial minorities) has sharply increased. To this day, the U. S. Department of Justice continues to enter into desegregation decrees with schools that have failed to “eliminat[e] the vestiges of de jure segregation.”
Moreover, underrepresented minority students are more likely to live in poverty and attend schools with a high concentration of poverty. When combined with residential segregation and school funding systems that rely heavily on local property taxes, this leads to racial minority students attending schools with fewer resources. See San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 72–86 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (noting school funding disparities that result from local property taxation). In ​turn, underrepresented minorities are more likely to attend schools with less qualified teachers, less challenging curricula, lower standardized test scores, and fewer extracurricular activities and advanced placement courses. It is thus unsurprising that there are achievement gaps along racial lines, even after controlling for income differences.
Systemic inequities disadvantaging underrepresented racial minorities exist beyond school resources. Students of color, particularly Black students, are disproportionately disciplined or suspended, interrupting their academic progress and increasing their risk of involvement with the criminal justice system. Underrepresented minorities are less likely to have parents with a postsecondary education who may be familiar with the college application process. Further, low-income children of color are less likely to attend preschool and other early childhood education programs that increase educational attainment. All of these ​interlocked factors place underrepresented minorities multiple steps behind the starting line in the race for college admissions.
In North Carolina, the home of UNC, racial inequality is deeply entrenched in K–12 education. State courts have consistently found that the State does not provide underrepresented racial minorities equal access to educational opportunities, and that racial disparities in public schooling have increased in recent years, in violation of the State Constitution. See, e.g., Hoke Cty. Bd. of Ed. v. State, 2020 WL 13310241, *6, *13 (N. C. Super. Ct., Jan. 21, 2020); Hoke Cty. Bd. of Ed. v. State, 382 N. C. 386, 388–390, 879 S. E. 2d 193, 197–198 (2022).
These opportunity gaps “result in fewer students from underrepresented backgrounds even applying to” college, particularly elite universities. Brief for Massachusetts Institute of Technology et al. as Amici Curiae 32. “Because talent lives everywhere, but opportunity does not, there are undoubtedly talented students with great academic potential who have simply not had the opportunity to attain the traditional indicia of merit that provide a competitive edge in the admissions process.” Brief for Harvard Student and Alumni Organizations as Amici Curiae 16. Consistent with this reality, Latino and Black students are less likely to enroll in institutions of higher education than their white peers.
Given the central role that education plays in breaking the cycle of racial inequality, these structural barriers reinforce other forms of inequality in communities of color. See E. Wilson, Monopolizing Whiteness, 134 Harv. L. Rev. ​2382, 2416 (2021) (“[E]ducational opportunities … allow for social mobility, better life outcomes, and the ability to participate equally in the social and economic life of the democracy”). Stark racial disparities exist, for example, in unemployment rates, income levels, wealth and homeownership, and healthcare access. See also Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U. S. 291, 380–381 (2014) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (noting the “persistent racial inequality in society”); Gratz, 539 U. S., at 299–301 (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (cataloging racial disparities in employment, poverty, healthcare, housing, consumer transactions, and education).
Put simply, society remains “inherently unequal.” Brown, 347 U. S., at 495. Racial inequality runs deep to this very day. That is particularly true in education, the “ ‘most vital civic institution for the preservation of a democratic system of government.’ ” Plyler v. Doe, 457 U. S. 202, 221, 223 (1982). As I have explained before, only with eyes open to this reality can the Court “carry out the guarantee of equal protection.” Schuette, 572 U. S., at 381 (dissenting opinion).
2
Both UNC and Harvard have sordid legacies of racial exclusion. Because “[c]ontext matters” when reviewing race-conscious college admissions programs, Grutter, 539 U. S., ​at 327, this reality informs the exigency of respondents’ current admissions policies and their racial diversity goals.
i
For much of its history, UNC was a bastion of white supremacy. Its leadership included “slaveholders, the leaders of the Ku Klux Klan, the central figures in the white supremacy campaigns of 1898 and 1900, and many of the State’s most ardent defenders of Jim Crow and race-based Social Darwinism in the twentieth century.” 3 App. 1680. The university excluded all people of color from its faculty and student body, glorified the institution of slavery, enforced its own Jim Crow regulations, and punished any dissent from racial orthodoxy. Id., at 1681–1683. It resisted racial integration after this Court’s decision in Brown, and was forced to integrate by court order in 1955. 3 App. 1685. It took almost 10 more years for the first Black woman to enroll at the university in 1963. See Karen L. Parker Collection, 1963–1966, UNC Wilson Special Collections Library. Even then, the university admitted only a handful of underrepresented racial minorities, and those students suffered constant harassment, humiliation, and isolation. 3 App. 1685. UNC officials openly resisted racial integration well into the 1980s, years after the youngest Member of this Court was born. Id., at 1688–1690. During that period, ​Black students faced racial epithets and stereotypes, received hate mail, and encountered Ku Klux Klan rallies on campus. 2 id., at 781–784; 3 id., at 1689.
To this day, UNC’s deep-seated legacy of racial subjugation continues to manifest itself in student life. Buildings on campus still bear the names of members of the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacist leaders. Id., at 1683. Students of color also continue to experience racial harassment, isolation, and tokenism. Plus, the student body remains predominantly white: approximately 72% of UNC students identify as white, while only 8% identify as Black. Id., at 1647. These numbers do not reflect the diversity of the State, particularly Black North Carolinians, who make up 22% of the population. Id., at 1648.
ii
UNC is not alone. Harvard, like other Ivy League universities in our country, “stood beside church and state as the third pillar of a civilization built on bondage.” C. Wilder, Ebony & Ivy: Race, Slavery, and the Troubled History of America’s Universities 11 (2013). From Harvard’s founding, slavery and racial subordination were integral parts of the institution’s funding, intellectual production, and campus life. Harvard and its donors had extensive financial ties to, and profited from, the slave trade, the labor of enslaved people, and slavery-related investments. As Harvard now recognizes, the accumulation of this wealth was “vital to the University’s growth” and establishment as an ​elite, national institution. Harvard & the Legacy of Slavery, Report by the President and Fellows of Harvard College 7 (2022) (Harvard Report). Harvard suppressed anti-slavery views, and enslaved persons “served Harvard presidents and professors and fed and cared for Harvard students” on campus. Id., at 7, 15.
Exclusion and discrimination continued to be a part of campus life well into the 20th century. Harvard’s leadership and prominent professors openly promoted “ ‘race science,’ ” racist eugenics, and other theories rooted in racial hierarchy. Id., at 11. Activities to advance these theories “took place on campus,” including “intrusive physical examinations” and “photographing of unclothed” students. Ibid. The university also “prized the admission of academically able Anglo-Saxon students from elite backgrounds—including wealthy white sons of the South.” Id., at 44. By contrast, an average of three Black students enrolled at Harvard each year during the five decades between 1890 and 1940. Id., at 45. Those Black students who managed to enroll at Harvard “excelled academically, earning equal or better academic records than most white students,” but faced the challenges of the deeply rooted legacy of slavery and racism on campus. Ibid. Meanwhile, a few women of color attended Radcliffe College, a separate and overwhelmingly white “women’s annex” where racial minorities were denied campus housing and scholarships. Id., at 51. Women of color at Radcliffe were taught by Harvard professors, but “women did not receive Harvard degrees until 1963.” Ibid.; see also S. Bradley, Upending the Ivory Tower: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Ivy League 17 (2018) (noting that the historical discussion of racial integration at the Ivy League “is necessarily male-centric,” given the historical exclusion of women of color from these institutions).
Today, benefactors with ties to slavery and white supremacy continue to be memorialized across campus through “statues, buildings, professorships, student houses, and the ​like.” Harvard Report 11. Black and Latino applicants account for only 20% of domestic applicants to Harvard each year. App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 20–1199, p. 112. “Even those students of color who beat the odds and earn an offer of admission” continue to experience isolation and alienation on campus. Brief for 25 Harvard Student and Alumni Organizations as Amici Curiae 30–31; 2 App. 823, 961. For years, the university has reported that inequities on campus remain. See, e.g., 4 App. 1564–1601. For example, Harvard has reported that “far too many black students at Harvard experience feelings of isolation and marginalization,” 3 id., at 1308, and that “student survey data show[ed] that only half of Harvard undergraduates believe that the housing system fosters exchanges between students of different backgrounds,” id., at 1309. *** These may be uncomfortable truths to some, but they are truths nonetheless. “Institutions can and do change,” however, as societal and legal changes force them “to live up to [their] highest ideals.” Harvard Report 56. It is against this historical backdrop that Harvard and UNC have reckoned with their past and its lingering effects. Acknowledging the reality that race has always mattered and continues to matter, these universities have established institutional goals of diversity and inclusion. Consistent with equal protection principles and this Court’s settled law, their policies use race in a limited way with the goal of recruiting, admitting, and enrolling underrepresented racial minorities to pursue the well-documented benefits of racial integration in education.
II
The Court today stands in the way of respondents’ commendable undertaking and entrenches racial inequality in higher education. The majority opinion does so by turning ​a blind eye to these truths and overruling decades of precedent, “content for now to disguise” its ruling as an application of “established law and move on.” Kennedy, 597 U. S., at ___ (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (slip op., at 29). As Justice Thomas puts it, “Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled.” Ante, at 58.
It is a disturbing feature of today’s decision that the Court does not even attempt to make the extraordinary showing required by stare decisis. The Court simply moves the goalposts, upsetting settled expectations and throwing admissions programs nationwide into turmoil. In the end, however, it is clear why the Court is forced to change the rules of the game to reach its desired outcome: Under a faithful application of the Court’s settled legal framework, Harvard and UNC’s admissions programs are constitutional and comply with Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, 42 U. S. C. §2000d et seq.
A
Answering the question whether Harvard’s and UNC’s policies survive strict scrutiny under settled law is straightforward, both because of the procedural posture of these cases and because of the narrow scope of the issues presented by petitioner Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. (SFFA).
These cases arrived at this Court after two lengthy trials. Harvard and UNC introduced dozens of fact witnesses, expert testimony, and documentary evidence in support of their admissions programs. Brief for Petitioner 20, 40. SFFA, by contrast, did not introduce a single fact witness and relied on the testimony of two experts. Ibid.
After making detailed findings of fact and conclusions of law, the District Courts entered judgment in favor of Harvard and UNC. See 397 F. Supp. 3d 126, 133–206 (Mass. 2019) (Harvard I); 567 F. Supp. 3d 580, 588–667 (MDNC 2021) (UNC). The First Circuit affirmed in the Harvard case, finding “no error” in the District Court’s thorough opinion. 980 F. 3d 157, 204 (2020) (Harvard II). SFFA then filed petitions for a writ of certiorari in both cases, which the Court granted. 595 U. S. ___ (2022).
The Court granted certiorari on three questions: (1) whether the Court should overrule Bakke, Grutter, and ​Fisher; or, alternatively, (2) whether UNC’s admissions program is narrowly tailored, and (3) whether Harvard’s admissions program is narrowly tailored. See Brief for Petitioner in No. 20–1199, p. i; Brief for Respondent in No. 20–1199, p. i; Brief for University Respondents in No. 21–707, p. i. Answering the last two questions, which call for application of settled law to the facts of these cases, is simple: Deferring to the lower courts’ careful findings of fact and credibility determinations, Harvard’s and UNC’s policies are narrowly tailored.
B 1
As to narrow tailoring, the only issue SFFA raises in the UNC case is that the university cannot use race in its admissions process because race-neutral alternatives would promote UNC’s diversity objectives. That issue is so easily resolved in favor of UNC that SFFA devoted only three pages to it at the end of its 87-page brief. Brief for Petitioner 83–86.
The use of race is narrowly tailored unless “workable” and “available” race-neutral approaches exist, meaning race-neutral alternatives promote the institution’s diversity goals and do so at “ ‘tolerable administrative expense.’ ” Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 312 (quoting Wygant v. Jackson Bd. of Ed., 476 U. S. 267, 280, n. 6 (1986) (plurality opinion)). Narrow tailoring does not mean perfect tailoring. The Court’s precedents make clear that “[n]arrow tailoring does not require exhaustion of every conceivable race-neutral alternative.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 339. “Nor does it require a university to choose between maintaining a reputation for excellence or fulfilling a commitment to provide educational opportunities to members of all racial groups.” Ibid.
As the District Court found after considering extensive expert testimony, SFFA’s proposed race-neutral alternatives do not meet those criteria. UNC, 567 F. Supp. 3d, ​at 648. All of SFFA’s proposals are methodologically flawed because they rest on “ ‘terribly unrealistic’ ” assumptions about the applicant pools. Id., at 643–645, 647. For example, as to one set of proposals, SFFA’s expert “unrealistically assumed” that “all of the top students in the candidate pools he use[d] would apply, be admitted, and enroll.” Id., at 647. In addition, some of SFFA’s proposals force UNC to “abandon its holistic approach” to college admissions, id., at 643–645, n. 43, a result “in deep tension with the goal of educational diversity as this Court’s cases have defined it,” Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 386–387. Others are “largely impractical—not to mention unprecedented—in higher education.” 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 647. SFFA’s proposed top percentage plans, for example, are based on a made-up and complicated admissions index that requires UNC to “access … real-time data for all high school students.” Ibid. UNC is then supposed to use that index, which “would change every time any student took a standardized test,” to rank students based on grades and test scores. Ibid. One of SFFA’s top percentage plans would even “nearly erase the Native American incoming class” at UNC. Id., at 646. The courts below correctly concluded that UNC is not required to adopt SFFA’s unrealistic proposals to satisfy strict scrutiny.
2
Harvard’s admissions program is also narrowly tailored under settled law. SFFA argues that Harvard’s program is not narrowly tailored because the university “has workable race-neutral alternatives,” “does not use race as a mere plus,” and “engages in racial balancing.” Brief for Petitioner 75–83. As the First Circuit concluded, there was “no error” in the District Court’s findings on any of these issues. Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 204.
Like UNC, Harvard has already implemented many of SFFA’s proposals, such as increasing recruitment efforts and financial aid for low-income students. Id., at 193. Also like UNC, Harvard “carefully considered” other race-neutral ways to achieve its diversity goals, but none of them are “workable.” Id., at 193–194. SFFA’s argument before this Court is that Harvard should adopt a plan designed by SFFA’s expert for purposes of trial, which increases preferences for low-income applicants and eliminates the use of race and legacy preferences. Id., at 193; Brief for Petitioner ​81. Under SFFA’s model, however, Black representation would plummet by about 32%, and the admitted share of applicants with high academic ratings would decrease, as would the share with high extracurricular and athletic ratings. 980 F. 3d, at 194. SFFA’s proposal, echoed by Justice Gorsuch, ante, at 14–15, requires Harvard to “make sacrifices on almost every dimension important to its admissions process,” 980 F. 3d, at 194, and forces it “to choose between a diverse student body and a reputation for academic excellence,” Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 385. Neither this Court’s precedents nor common sense impose that type of burden on colleges and universities.
The courts below also properly rejected SFFA’s argument that Harvard does not use race in the limited way this Court’s precedents allow. The Court has explained that a university can consider a student’s race in its admissions process so long as that use is “contextual and does not operate as a mechanical plus factor.” Id., at 375. The Court has also repeatedly held that race, when considered as one factor of many in the context of holistic review, “can make a difference to whether an application is accepted or rejected.” Ibid. After all, race-conscious admissions seek to improve racial diversity. Race cannot, however, be “‘decisive’ for virtually every minimally qualified underrepresented minority applicant.” Gratz, 539 U. S., at 272 (quoting Bakke, 438 U. S., at 317).
That is precisely how Harvard’s program operates. In recent years, Harvard has received about 35,000 applications for a class with about 1,600 seats. 980 F. 3d, at 165. The admissions process is exceedingly competitive; it involves six different application components. Those components include interviews with alumni and admissions officers, as well as consideration of a whole range of information, such as grades, test scores, recommendation letters, and personal essays, by several committees. Id., at 165–166. Consistent with that “individualized, holistic review process,” ​admissions officers may, but need not, consider a student’s self-reported racial identity when assigning overall ratings. Id., at 166, 169, 180. Even after so many layers of competitive review, Harvard typically ends up with about 2,000 tentative admits, more students than the 1,600 or so that the university can admit. Id., at 170. To choose among those highly qualified candidates, Harvard considers “plus factors,” which can help “tip an applicant into Harvard’s admitted class.” Id., at 170, 191. To diversify its class, Harvard awards “tips” for a variety of reasons, including geographic factors, socioeconomic status, ethnicity, and race. Ibid.
There is “no evidence of any mechanical use of tips.” Id., at 180. Consistent with the Court’s precedents, Harvard properly “considers race as part of a holistic review process,” “values all types of diversity,” “does not consider race exclusively,” and “does not award a fixed amount of points to applicants because of their race.” Id., at 190. Indeed, Harvard’s admissions process is so competitive and the use of race is so limited and flexible that, as “SFFA’s own expert’s analysis” showed, “Harvard rejects more than two-thirds of Hispanic applicants and slightly less than half of all African-American applicants who are among the top 10% most academically promising applicants.” Id., at 191.
The courts below correctly rejected SFFA’s view that Harvard’s use of race is unconstitutional because it impacts overall Hispanic and Black student representation by 45%. See Brief for Petitioner 79. That 45% figure shows that ​eliminating the use of race in admissions “would reduce African American representation … from 14% to 6% and Hispanic representation from 14% to 9%.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 180, 191. Such impact of Harvard’s limited use of race on the makeup of the class is less than this Court has previously upheld as narrowly tailored. In Grutter, for example, eliminating the use of race would have reduced the underrepresented minority population by 72%, a much greater effect. 539 U. S., at 320. And in Fisher II, the use of race helped increase Hispanic representation from 11% to 16.9% (a 54% increase) and African-American representation from 3.5% to 6.8% (a 94% increase). 579 U. S., at 384.
​Finally, the courts below correctly concluded that Harvard complies with this Court’s repeated admonition that colleges and universities cannot define their diversity interest “as ‘some specified percentage of a particular group merely because of its race or ethnic origin.’ ” Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 311 (quoting Bakke, 438 U. S., at 307). Harvard does not specify its diversity objectives in terms of racial quotas, and “SFFA did not offer expert testimony to support its racial balancing claim.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 180, 186–187. Harvard’s statistical evidence, by contrast, showed that the admitted classes across racial groups varied considerably year to year, a pattern “inconsistent with the imposition of a racial quota or racial balancing.” Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 176–177; see Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 180, 188–189.
Similarly, Harvard’s use of “one-pagers” containing “a snapshot of various demographic characteristics of Harvard’s applicant pool” during the admissions review process is perfectly consistent with this Court’s precedents. Id., at 170–171, 189. Consultation of these reports, with no “specific number firmly in mind,” “does not transform [Harvard’s] program into a quota.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 335–336. Rather, Harvard’s ongoing review complies with the Court’s command that universities periodically review the necessity of the use of race in their admissions programs. Id., at 342; Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 388.
The Court ignores these careful findings and concludes that Harvard engages in racial balancing because its “focus on numbers is obvious.” Ante, at 31. Because SFFA failed to offer an expert and to prove its claim below, the majority ​is forced to reconstruct the record and conduct its own factual analysis. It thus relies on a single chart from SFFA’s brief that truncates relevant data in the record. Compare ibid. (citing Brief for Petitioner in No. 20–1199, p. 23) with 4 App. in No. 20–1199, p. 1770. That chart cannot displace the careful factfinding by the District Court, which the First Circuit upheld on appeal under clear error review. See Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 180–182, 188–189.
In any event, the chart is misleading and ignores “the broader context” of the underlying data that it purports to summarize. Id., at 188. As the First Circuit concluded, what the data actually show is that admissions have increased for all racial minorities, including Asian American students, whose admissions numbers have “increased roughly five-fold since 1980 and roughly two-fold since 1990.” Id., at 180, 188. The data also show that the racial shares of admitted applicants fluctuate more than the corresponding racial shares of total applicants, which is “the opposite of what one would expect if Harvard imposed a quota.” Id., at 188. Even looking at the Court’s truncated period for the classes of 2009 to 2018, “the same pattern holds.” Ibid. The fact that Harvard’s racial shares of admitted applicants “varies relatively little in absolute terms for [those classes] is unsurprising and reflects the fact that the racial makeup of Harvard’s applicant pool also varies very little over this period.” Id., at 188–189. Thus, properly understood, the data show that Harvard “does not utilize quotas and does not engage in racial balancing.” Id., at 189.
III
The Court concludes that Harvard’s and UNC’s policies are unconstitutional because they serve objectives that are insufficiently measurable, employ racial categories that are imprecise and overbroad, rely on racial stereotypes and disadvantage nonminority groups, and do not have an end point. Ante, at 21–34, 39. In reaching this conclusion, the Court claims those supposed issues with respondents’ programs render the programs insufficiently “narrow” under the strict scrutiny framework that the Court’s precedents command. Ante, at 22. In reality, however, “the Court today cuts through the kudzu” and overrules its “higher-education precedents” following Bakke. Ante, at 22 (Gorsuch, J., concurring).
There is no better evidence that the Court is overruling the Court’s precedents than those precedents themselves. “Every one of the arguments made by the majority can be found in the dissenting opinions filed in [the] cases” the majority now overrules. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 846 (1991) (Marshall, J., dissenting); see, e.g., Grutter, 539 U. S., at 354 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Unlike the majority, I seek to define with precision the interest being asserted”); Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 389 (Thomas, J., dissenting) (race-conscious admissions ​programs “res[t] on pernicious assumptions about race”); id., at 403 (Alito, J., joined by Roberts, C. J., and Thomas, J., dissenting) (diversity interests “are laudable goals, but they are not concrete or precise”); id., at 413 (race-conscious college admissions plan “discriminates against Asian-American students”); id., at 414 (race-conscious admissions plan is unconstitutional because it “does not specify what it means to be ‘African-American,’ ‘Hispanic,’ ‘Asian American,’ ‘Native American,’ or ‘White’ ”); id., at 419 (race-conscious college admissions policies rest on “pernicious stereotype[s]”).
Lost arguments are not grounds to overrule a case. When proponents of those arguments, greater now in number on the Court, return to fight old battles anew, it betrays an unrestrained disregard for precedent. It fosters the People’s suspicions that “bedrock principles are founded … in the proclivities of individuals” on this Court, not in the law, and it degrades “the integrity of our constitutional system of government.” Vasquez v. Hillery, 474 U. S. 254, 265 (1986). Nowhere is the damage greater than in cases like these that touch upon matters of representation and institutional legitimacy.
The Court offers no justification, much less “a ‘special justification,’ ” for its costly endeavor. Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization, 597 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (joint opinion of Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting) (slip op., at 31) (quoting Gamble v. United States, 587 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 11)). Nor could it. There is no basis for overruling Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher. The Court’s precedents were correctly decided, the opinion today is not workable and creates serious equal protection problems, important reliance interests favor respondents, and there are no legal or factual developments favoring the Court’s reckless course. See 597 U. S., at ___ (joint opinion of Breyer, Sotomayor, and Kagan, JJ., dissenting) (slip op., at 31); id., at ___–___ (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) ( ​slip op., at 6–7). At bottom, the six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law.
A 1
A limited use of race in college admissions is consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment and this Court’s broader equal protection jurisprudence. The text and history of the Fourteenth Amendment make clear that the Equal Protection Clause permits race-conscious measures. See supra, at 2–9. Consistent with that view, the Court has explicitly held that “race-based action” is sometimes “within constitutional constraints.” Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 237 (1995). The Court has thus upheld the use of race in a variety of contexts. See, e.g., Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School Dist. No. 1, 551 U. S. 701, 737 (2007) (“[T]he obligation to disestablish a school system segregated by law can include race-conscious remedies—whether or not a court had issued an order to that effect”); Johnson v. California, 543 U. S. 499, 512 (2005) (use of race permissible to further prison’s interest in “ ‘security’ ” and “ ‘discipline’ ”); Cooper v. Harris, 581 U. S. 285, 291–293 (2017) (use of race permissible when drawing voting districts in some circumstances).
Tellingly, in sharp contrast with today’s decision, the Court has allowed the use of race when that use burdens minority populations. In United States v. Brignoni-Ponce, ​422 U. S. 873 (1975), for example, the Court held that it is unconstitutional for border patrol agents to rely on a person’s skin color as “a single factor” to justify a traffic stop based on reasonable suspicion, but it remarked that “Mexican appearance” could be “a relevant factor” out of many to justify such a stop “at the border and its functional equivalents.” Id., at 884–887; see also id., at 882 (recognizing that “the border” includes entire metropolitan areas such as San Diego, El Paso, and the South Texas Rio Grande Valley). The Court thus facilitated racial profiling of Latinos as a law enforcement tool and did not adopt a race-blind rule. The Court later extended this reasoning to border patrol agents selectively referring motorists for secondary inspection at a checkpoint, concluding that “even if it be assumed that such referrals are made largely on the basis of apparent Mexican ancestry, [there is] no constitutional violation.” United States v. Martinez-Fuerte, 428 U. S. 543, 562–563 (1976) (footnote omitted).
The result of today’s decision is that a person’s skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person’s individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
2
The majority does not dispute that some uses of race are constitutionally permissible. See ante, at 15. Indeed, it agrees that a limited use of race is permissible in some college admissions programs. In a footnote, the Court exempts military academies from its ruling in light of “the potentially distinct interests” they may present. Ante, at 22, n. 4. ​To the extent the Court suggests national security interests are “distinct,” those interests cannot explain the Court’s narrow exemption, as national security interests are also implicated at civilian universities. See infra, at 64–65. The Court also attempts to justify its carveout based on the fact that “[n]o military academy is a party to these cases.” Ante, at 22, n. 4. Yet the same can be said of many other institutions that are not parties here, including the religious universities supporting respondents, which the Court does not similarly exempt from its sweeping opinion. See Brief for Georgetown University et al. as Amici Curiae 18–29 (Georgetown Brief) (Catholic colleges and universities noting that they rely on the use of race in their holistic admissions to further not just their academic goals, but also their religious missions); see also Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 187, n. 24 (“[S]chools that consider race are diverse on numerous dimensions, including in terms of religious affiliation, location, size, and courses of study offered”). The Court’s carveout only highlights the arbitrariness of its decision and further proves that the Fourteenth Amendment does not categorically prohibit the use of race in college admissions.
The concurring opinions also agree that the Constitution tolerates some racial classifications. Justice Gorsuch agrees with the majority’s conclusion that racial classifications are constitutionally permissible if they advance a compelling interest in a narrowly tailored way. Ante, at 23. Justice Kavanaugh, too, agrees that the Constitution permits the use of race if it survives strict scrutiny. Ante, at 2. Justice Thomas offers an “originalist defense of the ​colorblind Constitution,” but his historical analysis leads to the inevitable conclusion that the Constitution is not, in fact, colorblind. Ante, at 2. Like the majority opinion, Justice Thomas agrees that race can be used to remedy past discrimination and “to equalize treatment against a concrete baseline of government-imposed inequality.” Ante, at 18–21. He also argues that race can be used if it satisfies strict scrutiny more broadly, and he considers compelling interests those that prevent anarchy, curb violence, and segregate prisoners. Ante, at 26. Thus, although Justice Thomas at times suggests that the Constitution only permits “directly remedial” measures that benefit “identified victims of discrimination,” ante, at 20, he agrees that the Constitution tolerates a much wider range of race-conscious measures.
In the end, when the Court speaks of a “colorblind” Constitution, it cannot really mean it, for it is faced with a body of law that recognizes that race-conscious measures are permissible under the Equal Protection Clause. Instead, what the Court actually lands on is an understanding of the Constitution that is “colorblind” sometimes, when the Court so chooses. Behind those choices lie the Court’s own value judgments about what type of interests are sufficiently compelling to justify race-conscious measures.
Overruling decades of precedent, today’s newly constituted Court singles out the limited use of race in holistic college admissions. It strikes at the heart of Bakke, Grutter, and Fisher by holding that racial diversity is an “inescapably imponderable” objective that cannot justify race-conscious affirmative action, ante, at 24, even though respondents’ objectives simply “mirror the ‘compelling interest’ this Court ​has approved” many times in the past. Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 382; see, e.g., UNC, 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 598 (“the [university’s admissions policy] repeatedly cites Supreme Court precedent as guideposts”). At bottom, without any new factual or legal justification, the Court overrides its longstanding holding that diversity in higher education is of compelling value.
To avoid public accountability for its choice, the Court seeks cover behind a unique measurability requirement of its own creation. None of this Court’s precedents, however, requires that a compelling interest meet some threshold level of precision to be deemed sufficiently compelling. In fact, this Court has recognized as compelling plenty of interests that are equally or more amorphous, including the “intangible” interest in preserving “public confidence in judicial integrity,” an interest that “does not easily reduce to precise definition.” Williams-Yulee v. Florida Bar, 575 U. S. 433, 447, 454 (2015) (Roberts, C. J., for the Court); see also, e.g., Ramirez v. Collier, 595 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (Roberts, C. J., for the Court) (slip op., at 18) (“[M]aintaining solemnity and decorum in the execution chamber” is a “compelling” interest); United States v. Alvarez, 567 U. S. 709, 725 (2012) (plurality opinion) (“[P]rotecting the integrity of the Medal of Honor” is a “compelling interes[t]”); Sable Communications of Cal., Inc. v. FCC, 492 U. S. 115, 126 (1989) (“[P]rotecting the physical and psychological wellbeing of minors” is a “compelling interest”). Thus, although ​the Members of this majority pay lip service to respondents’ “commendable” and “worthy” racial diversity goals, ante, at 23–24, they make a clear value judgment today: Racial integration in higher education is not sufficiently important to them. “Today, the proclivities of individuals rule.” Dobbs, 597 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 6).
The majority offers no response to any of this. Instead, it attacks a straw man, arguing that the Court’s cases recognize that remedying the effects of “societal discrimination” does not constitute a compelling interest. Ante, at 34–35. Yet as the majority acknowledges, while Bakke rejected that interest as insufficiently compelling, it upheld a limited use of race in college admissions to promote the educational benefits that flow from diversity. 438 U. S., at 311–315. It is that narrower interest, which the Court has reaffirmed numerous times since Bakke and as recently as 2016 in Fisher II, see supra, at 14–15, that the Court overrules today.
B
The Court’s precedents authorizing a limited use of race in college admissions are not just workable—they have been working. Lower courts have consistently applied them without issue, as exemplified by the opinions below and SFFA’s and the Court’s inability to identify any split of authority. Today, the Court replaces this settled framework with a set of novel restraints that create troubling equal protection problems and share one common purpose: to make it impossible to use race in a holistic way in college admissions, where it is much needed.
1
The Court argues that Harvard’s and UNC’s programs must end because they unfairly disadvantage some racial groups. According to the Court, college admissions are a “zero-sum” game and respondents’ use of race unfairly “ ​advantages” underrepresented minority students “at the expense of” other students. Ante, at 27.
That is not the role race plays in holistic admissions. Consistent with the Court’s precedents, respondents’ holistic review policies consider race in a very limited way. Race is only one factor out of many. That type of system allows Harvard and UNC to assemble a diverse class on a multitude of dimensions. Respondents’ policies allow them to select students with various unique attributes, including talented athletes, artists, scientists, and musicians. They also allow respondents to assemble a class with diverse viewpoints, including students who have different political ideologies and academic interests, who have struggled with different types of disabilities, who are from various socioeconomic backgrounds, who understand different ways of life in various parts of the country, and—yes—students who self-identify with various racial backgrounds and who can offer different perspectives because of that identity.
That type of multidimensional system benefits all students. In fact, racial groups that are not underrepresented tend to benefit disproportionately from such a system. Harvard’s holistic system, for example, provides points to applicants who qualify as “ALDC,” meaning “athletes, legacy applicants, applicants on the Dean’s Interest List [primarily relatives of donors], and children of faculty or staff.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 171 (noting also that “SFFA does not challenge the admission of this large group”). ALDC applicants are predominantly white: Around 67.8% are white, 11.4% are Asian American, 6% are Black, and 5.6% are Latino. Ibid. By contrast, only 40.3% of non-ALDC applicants are white, 28.3% are Asian American, 11% are Black, and 12.6% are Latino. Ibid. Although “ALDC applicants make up less than 5% of applicants to Harvard,” they constitute “around 30% of the applicants admitted each year.” Ibid. Similarly, because of achievement gaps that result from entrenched racial inequality in K–12 education, see ​infra, at 18–21, a heavy emphasis on grades and standardized test scores disproportionately disadvantages underrepresented racial minorities. Stated simply, race is one small piece of a much larger admissions puzzle where most of the pieces disfavor underrepresented racial minorities. That is precisely why underrepresented racial minorities remain underrepresented. The Court’s suggestion that an already advantaged racial group is “disadvantaged” because of a limited use of race is a myth.
The majority’s true objection appears to be that a limited use of race in college admissions does, in fact, achieve what it is designed to achieve: It helps equalize opportunity and advances respondents’ objectives by increasing the number of underrepresented racial minorities on college campuses, particularly Black and Latino students. This is unacceptable, the Court says, because racial groups that are not underrepresented “would be admitted in greater numbers” without these policies. Ante, at 28. Reduced to its simplest terms, the Court’s conclusion is that an increase in the representation of racial minorities at institutions of higher learning that were historically reserved for white Americans is an unfair and repugnant outcome that offends the Equal Protection Clause. It provides a license to discriminate against white Americans, the Court says, which requires the courts and state actors to “pic[k] the right races to benefit.” Ante, at 38.
Nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment or its history supports the Court’s shocking proposition, which echoes arguments made by opponents of Reconstruction-era laws and this Court’s decision in Brown. Supra, at 2–17. In a society where opportunity is dispensed along racial lines, racial equality cannot be achieved without making room for underrepresented groups that for far too long were denied admission through the force of law, including at Harvard and UNC. Quite the opposite: A racially integrated vision of ​society, in which institutions reflect all sectors of the American public and where “the sons of former slaves and the sons of former slave owners [are] able to sit down together at the table of brotherhood,” is precisely what the Equal Protection Clause commands. Martin Luther King “I Have a Dream” Speech (Aug. 28, 1963). It is “essential if the dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 332.
By singling out race, the Court imposes a special burden on racial minorities for whom race is a crucial component of their identity. Holistic admissions require “truly individualized consideration” of the whole person. Id., at 334. Yet, “by foreclosing racial considerations, colorblindness denies those who racially self-identify the full expression of their identity” and treats “racial identity as inferior” among all “other forms of social identity.” E. Boddie, The Indignities of Colorblindness, 64 UCLA L. Rev. Discourse, 64, 67 (2016). The Court’s approach thus turns the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee on its head and creates an equal protection problem of its own.
There is no question that minority students will bear the burden of today’s decision. Students of color testified at ​trial that racial self-identification was an important component of their application because without it they would not be able to present a full version of themselves. For example, Rimel Mwamba, a Black UNC alumna, testified that it was “really important” that UNC see who she is “holistically and how the color of [her] skin and the texture of [her] hair impacted [her] upbringing.” 2 App. in No. 21–707, p. 1033. Itzel Vasquez-Rodriguez, who identifies as Mexican-American of Cora descent, testified that her ethnoracial identity is a “core piece” of who she is and has impacted “every experience” she has had, such that she could not explain her “potential contributions to Harvard without any reference” to it. 2 App. in No. 20–1199, at 906, 908. Sally Chen, a Harvard alumna who identifies as Chinese American, explained that being the child of Chinese immigrants was “really fundamental to explaining who” she is. Id., at 968–969. Thang Diep, a Harvard alumnus, testified that his Vietnamese identity was “such a big part” of himself that he needed to discuss it in his application. Id., at 949. And Sarah Cole, a Black Harvard alumna, emphasized that “[t]o try to not see [her] race is to try to not see [her] simply because there is no part of [her] experience, no part of [her] journey, no part of [her] life that has been untouched by [her] race.” Id., at 932.
In a single paragraph at the end of its lengthy opinion, the Court suggests that “nothing” in today’s opinion prohibits universities from considering a student’s essay that explains “how race affected [that student’s] life.” Ante, at 39. This supposed recognition that universities can, in some situations, consider race in application essays is nothing but an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. The Court’s opinion circumscribes universities’ ability to consider race in any form by meticulously gutting respondents’ asserted diversity interests. See [[{{{work}}}|supra, at 41–43#41]]. Yet, because the Court cannot escape the inevitable truth that race matters in students’ lives, it announces a false promise to save face and appear ​attuned to reality. No one is fooled.
Further, the Court’s demand that a student’s discussion of racial self-identification be tied to individual qualities, such as “courage,” “leadership,” “unique ability,” and “determination,” only serves to perpetuate the false narrative that Harvard and UNC currently provide “preferences on the basis of race alone.” Ante, at 28–29, 39; see also ante, at 28, n. 6 (claiming without support that “race alone … explains the admissions decisions for hundreds if not thousands of applicants”). The Court’s precedents already require that universities take race into account holistically, in a limited way, and based on the type of “individualized” and “flexible” assessment that the Court purports to favor. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 334; see Brief for Students and Alumni of Harvard College as Amici Curiae 15–17 (Harvard College Brief) (describing how the dozens of application files in the record “uniformly show that, in line with Harvard’s ‘whole-person’ admissions philosophy, Harvard’s admissions officers engage in a highly nuanced assessment of each applicant’s background and qualifications”). After extensive discovery and two lengthy trials, neither SFFA nor the majority can point to a single example of an underrepresented racial minority who was admitted to Harvard or UNC on the basis of “race alone.”
In the end, the Court merely imposes its preferred college application format on the Nation, not acting as a court of law applying precedent but taking on the role of college administrators to decide what is better for society. The Court’s course reflects its inability to recognize that racial identity informs some students’ viewpoints and experiences in unique ways. The Court goes as far as to claim that Bakke’s recognition that Black Americans can offer different perspectives than white people amounts to a “stereotype.” Ante, at 29.
It is not a stereotype to acknowledge the basic truth that ​young people’s experiences are shaded by a societal structure where race matters. Acknowledging that there is something special about a student of color who graduates valedictorian from a predominantly white school is not a stereotype. Nor is it a stereotype to acknowledge that race imposes certain burdens on students of color that it does not impose on white students. “For generations, black and brown parents have given their children ‘the talk’—instructing them never to run down the street; always keep your hands where they can be seen; do not even think of talking back to a stranger—all out of fear of how an officer with a gun will react to them.” Utah v. Strieff, 579 U. S. 232, 254 (2016) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting). Those conversations occur regardless of socioeconomic background or any other aspect of a student’s self-identification. They occur because of race. As Andrew Brennen, a UNC alumnus, testified, “running down the neighborhood … people don’t see [him] as someone that is relatively affluent; they see [him] as a black man.” 2 App. in No. 21–707, at 951–952.
The absence of racial diversity, by contrast, actually contributes to stereotyping. “[D]iminishing the force of such stereotypes is both a crucial part of [respondents’] mission, and one that [they] cannot accomplish with only token numbers of minority students.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 333. When there is an increase in underrepresented minority students on campus, “racial stereotypes lose their force” because diversity allows students to “learn there is no ‘minority viewpoint’ but rather a variety of viewpoints among minority students.” Id., at 319–320. By preventing respondents from achieving their diversity objectives, it is the Court’s opinion that facilitates stereotyping on American college campuses.
To be clear, today’s decision leaves intact holistic college admissions and recruitment efforts that seek to enroll diverse classes without using racial classifications. Universities should continue to use those tools as best they can to ​recruit and admit students from different backgrounds based on all the other factors the Court’s opinion does not, and cannot, touch. Colleges and universities can continue to consider socioeconomic diversity and to recruit and enroll students who are first-generation college applicants or who speak multiple languages, for example. Those factors are not “interchangeable” with race. UNC, 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 643; see, e.g., 2 App. in No. 21–707, at 975–976 (Laura Ornelas, a UNC alumna, testifying that her Latina identity, socioeconomic status, and first-generation college status are all important but different “parts to getting a full picture” of who she is and how she “see[s] the world”). At SFFA’s own urging, those efforts remain constitutionally permissible. See Brief for Petitioner 81–86 (emphasizing “race-neutral” alternatives that Harvard and UNC should implement, such as those that focus on socioeconomic and geographic diversity, percentage plans, plans that increase community college transfers, and plans that develop partnerships with disadvantaged high schools); see also ante, at 51, 53, 55–56 (Thomas, J., concurring) (arguing universities can consider “[r]ace-neutral policies” similar to those adopted in States such as California and Michigan, and that universities can consider “status as a first-generation college applicant,” “financial means,” and “generational inheritance or otherwise”); ante, at 8 (Kavanaugh, J., concurring) (citing SFFA’s briefs and concluding that universities can use “race-neutral” means); ante, at 14, n. 4 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (“recount[ing] what SFFA has argued every step of the way” as to “race-neutral tools”).
The Court today also does not adopt SFFA’s suggestion that college admissions should be a function of academic metrics alone. Using class rank or standardized test scores as the only admissions criteria would severely undermine multidimensional diversity in higher education. Such a system “would exclude the star athlete or musician whose grades suffered because of daily practices and training. It ​would exclude a talented young biologist who struggled to maintain above-average grades in humanities classes. And it would exclude a student whose freshman-year grades were poor because of a family crisis but who got herself back on track in her last three years of school, only to find herself just outside of the top decile of her class.” Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 386. A myopic focus on academic ratings “does not lead to a diverse student body.” Ibid.
2
As noted above, this Court suggests that the use of race in college admissions is unworkable because respondents’ objectives are not sufficiently “measurable,” “focused,” “concrete,” and “coherent.” Ante, at 23, 26, 39. How much more precision is required or how universities are supposed to meet the Court’s measurability requirement, the Court’s opinion does not say. That is exactly the point. The Court is not interested in crafting a workable framework that promotes racial diversity on college campuses. Instead, it announces a requirement designed to ensure all race-conscious plans fail. Any increased level of precision runs the risk of violating the Court’s admonition that colleges and universities operate their race-conscious admissions policies with no “ ‘specified percentage[s]’ ” and no “specific number[s] firmly in mind.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 324, 335. Thus, the majority’s holding puts schools in an untenable position. It creates a legal framework where race-conscious plans must be measured with precision but also must not be measured with precision. That holding is not meant to infuse clarity into the strict scrutiny framework; it is designed to render strict scrutiny “ ‘fatal in fact.’ ” Id., at 326 (quoting Adarand ​Constructors, Inc., 515 U. S., at 237). Indeed, the Court gives the game away when it holds that, to the extent respondents are actually measuring their diversity objectives with any level of specificity (for example, with a “focus on numbers” or specific “numerical commitment”), their plans are unconstitutional. Ante, at 30–31; see also ante, at 29 (Thomas, J., concurring) (“I highly doubt any [university] will be able to” show a “measurable state interest”).
3
The Court also holds that Harvard’s and UNC’s race-conscious programs are unconstitutional because they rely on racial categories that are “imprecise,” “opaque,” and “arbitrary.” Ante, at 25. To start, the racial categories that the Court finds troubling resemble those used across the Federal Government for data collection, compliance reporting, and program administration purposes, including, for example, by the U. S. Census Bureau. See, e.g., 62 Fed. Reg. 58786–58790 (1997). Surely, not all “ ‘federal grant-in-aid benefits, drafting of legislation, urban and regional planning, business planning, and academic and social studies’ ” that flow from census data collection, Department of Commerce v. New York, 588 U. S. ___, ___ (2019) (slip op., at 2), are constitutionally suspect.
The majority presumes that it knows better and appoints itself as an expert on data collection methods, calling for a higher level of granularity to fix a supposed problem of overinclusiveness and underinclusiveness. Yet it does not identify a single instance where respondents’ methodology has prevented any student from reporting their race with the level of detail they preferred. The record shows that it is up to students to choose whether to identify as one, multiple, or none of these categories. See Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 137; UNC, 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 596. To the extent students need to convey additional information, students can select subcategories or provide more detail in ​their personal statements or essays. See Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 137. Students often do so. See, e.g., 2 App. in No. 20–1199, at 906–907 (student respondent discussing her Latina identity on her application); id., at 949 (student respondent testifying he “wrote about [his] Vietnamese identity on [his] application”). Notwithstanding this Court’s confusion about racial self-identification, neither students nor universities are confused. There is no evidence that the racial categories that respondents use are unworkable.
4
Cherry-picking language from Grutter, the Court also holds that Harvard’s and UNC’s race-conscious programs are unconstitutional because they do not have a specific expiration date. Ante, at 30–34. This new durational requirement is also not grounded in law, facts, or common sense. Grutter simply announced a general “expect[ation]” that “the use of racial preferences [would] no longer be necessary” in the future. 539 U. S., at 343. As even SFFA acknowledges, those remarks were nothing but aspirational statements by the Grutter Court. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–707, p. 56.
Yet this Court suggests that everyone, including the Court itself, has been misreading Grutter for 20 years. ​Grutter, according to the majority, requires that universities identify a specific “end point” for the use of race. Ante, at 33. Justice Kavanaugh, for his part, suggests that Grutter itself automatically expires in 25 years, after either “the college class of 2028” or “the college class of 2032.” Ante, at 7, n. 1. A faithful reading of this Court’s precedents reveals that Grutter held nothing of the sort.
True, Grutter referred to “25 years,” but that arbitrary number simply reflected the time that had elapsed since the Court “first approved the use of race” in college admissions in Bakke. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 343. It is also true that Grutter remarked that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” but it did not do so in a vaccum, as the Court suggests. Id., at 342. Rather than impose a fixed expiration date, the Court tasked universities with the responsibility of periodically assessing whether their race-conscious programs “are still necessary.” Ibid. Grutter offered as examples sunset provisions, periodic reviews, and experimenting with “race-neutral alternatives as they develop.” Ibid. That is precisely how this Court has previously interpreted Grutter’s command. See Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 388 (“It is the University’s ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies”).
Grutter’s requirement that universities engage in periodic reviews so the use of race can end “as soon as practicable” is well grounded in the need to ensure that race is “employed no more broadly than the interest demands.” 539 U. S., at 343. That is, it is grounded in strict scrutiny. By contrast, the Court’s holding is based on the fiction that racial inequality has a predictable cutoff date. Equality is an ongoing project in a society where racial inequality persists. See supra, at 17–25. A temporal requirement that rests on the fantasy that racial inequality will end at a predictable hour is illogical and unworkable. There is a sound reason ​why this Court’s precedents have never imposed the majority’s strict deadline: Institutions cannot predict the future. Speculating about a day when consideration of race will become unnecessary is arbitrary at best and frivolous at worst. There is no constitutional duty to engage in that type of shallow guesswork.
Harvard and UNC engage in the ongoing review that the Court’s precedents demand. They “use [their] data to scrutinize the fairness of [their] admissions program[s]; to assess whether changing demographics have undermined the need for a race-conscious policy; and to identify the effects, both positive and negative, of the affirmative-action measures [they] dee[m] necessary.” Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 388. The Court holds, however, that respondents’ attention to numbers amounts to unconstitutional racial balancing. Ante, at 30–32. But “ ‘[s]ome attention to numbers’ ” is both necessary and permissible. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 336 (quoting Bakke, 438 U. S., at 323). Universities cannot blindly operate their limited race-conscious programs without regard for any quantitative information. “Increasing minority enrollment [is] instrumental to th[e] educational benefits” that respondents seek to achieve, Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 381, and statistics, data, and numbers “have some value ​as a gauge of [respondents’] ability to enroll students who can offer underrepresented perspectives.” Id., at 383–384. By removing universities’ ability to assess the success of their programs, the Court obstructs these institutions’ ability to meet their diversity goals.
5
Justice Thomas, for his part, offers a multitude of arguments for why race-conscious college admissions policies supposedly “burden” racial minorities. Ante, at 39. None of them has any merit.
He first renews his argument that the use of race in holistic admissions leads to the “inevitable” “underperformance” by Black and Latino students at elite universities “because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete.” Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 332 (concurring opinion). Justice Thomas speaks only for himself. The Court previously declined to adopt this so-called “mismatch” hypothesis for good reason: It was debunked long ago. The decades-old “studies” advanced by the handful of authors upon whom Justice Thomas relies, ante, at 40–41, have “major methodological flaws,” are based on unreliable data, and do not “meet the basic tenets of rigorous social science research.” Brief for Empirical Scholars as Amici Curiae 3, 9–25. By contrast, “[m]any social scientists have studied the impact of elite educational institutions on student outcomes, and have found, among other things, that attending a more selective school is associated with higher graduation rates and higher earnings for [underrepresented minority] students—conclusions directly contrary to mismatch.” Id., at 7–9 (collecting studies). This extensive body of research is supported by the most obvious data point available to this institution today: The three Justices of color on this Court graduated from elite universities and law schools with ​race-conscious admissions programs, and achieved successful legal careers, despite having different educational backgrounds than their peers. A discredited hypothesis that the Court previously rejected is no reason to overrule precedent.
Justice Thomas claims that the weight of this evidence is overcome by a single more recent article published in 2016. Ante, at 41, n. 8. That article, however, explains that studies supporting the mismatch hypothesis “yield misleading conclusions,” “overstate the amount of mismatch,” “preclude one from drawing any concrete conclusions,” and rely on methodologically flawed assumptions that “lea[d] to an upwardly-biased estimate of mismatch.” P. Arcidiacono & M. Lovenheim, Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Trade-off, 54 J. Econ. Lit. 3, 17, 20 (2016); see id., at 6 (“economists should be very skeptical of the mismatch hypothesis”). Notably, this refutation of the mismatch theory was coauthored by one of SFFA’s experts, as Justice Thomas seems to recognize.
Citing nothing but his own long-held belief, Justice Thomas also equates affirmative action in higher education with segregation, arguing that “racial preferences in college admissions ‘stamp [Black and Latino students] with a badge of inferiority.’ ” Ante, at 41 (quoting Adarand, 515 U. S., at 241 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)). Studies disprove this sentiment, which echoes “tropes of stigma” that “were employed to oppose Reconstruction policies.” A. Onwuachi-Willig, E. Houh, & M. Campbell, Cracking the Egg: Which Came First—Stigma or Affirmative Action? 96 Cal. L. Rev. 1299, 1323 (2008); see, e.g., id., at 1343–1344 (study of seven law schools showing that stigma results from “racial stereotypes that have attached historically to different groups, regardless of affirmative action’s existence”). Indeed, equating state-sponsored segregation with race-conscious admissions policies that promote racial integration trivializes the harms of segregation and offends ​Brown’s transformative legacy. School segregation “has a detrimental effect” on Black students by “denoting the inferiority” of “their status in the community” and by “ ‘depriv[ing] them of some of the benefits they would receive in a racial[ly] integrated school system.’ ” 347 U. S., at 494. In sharp contrast, race-conscious college admissions ensure that higher education is “visibly open to” and “inclusive of talented and qualified individuals of every race and ethnicity.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 332. These two uses of race are not created equal. They are not “equally objectionable.” Id., at 327.
Relatedly, Justice Thomas suggests that race-conscious college admissions policies harm racial minorities by increasing affinity-based activities on college campuses. Ante, at 46. Not only is there no evidence of a causal connection between the use of race in college admissions and the supposed rise of those activities, but Justice Thomas points to no evidence that affinity groups cause any harm. Affinity-based activities actually help racial minorities improve their visibility on college campuses and “decreas[e] racial stigma and vulnerability to stereotypes” caused by “conditions of racial isolation” and “tokenization.” U. Jayakumar, Why Are All Black Students Still Sitting Together in the Proverbial College Cafeteria?, Higher Education Research Institute at UCLA (Oct. 2015); see also Brief for Respondent-Students in No. 21–707, p. 42 (collecting student testimony demonstrating that “affinity groups beget important academic and social benefits” for racial minorities); 4 App. in No. 20–1199, at 1591 (Harvard Working Group on Diversity and Inclusion Report) (noting that concerns “that culturally specific spaces or affinity-themed housing will isolate” student minorities are misguided because those spaces allow students “to come together … to deal with intellectual, emotional, and social challenges”).
Citing no evidence, Justice Thomas also suggests that race-conscious admissions programs discriminate against ​Asian American students. Ante, at 43–44. It is true that SFFA “allege[d]” that Harvard discriminates against Asian American students. Ante, at 43. Specifically, SFFA argued that Harvard discriminates against Asian American applicants vis-à-vis white applicants through the use of the personal rating, an allegedly “highly subjective” component of the admissions process that is “susceptible to stereotyping and bias.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 196; see Brief for Professors of Economics as Amici Curiae 24. It is also true, however, that there was a lengthy trial to test those allegations, which SFFA lost. Justice Thomas points to no legal or factual error below, precisely because there is none.
To begin, this part of SFFA’s discrimination claim does not even fall under the strict scrutiny framework in Grutter and its progeny, which concerns the use of racial classifications. The personal rating is a facially race-neutral component of Harvard’s admissions policy. Therefore, even assuming for the sake of argument that Harvard engages in racial discrimination through the personal rating, there is no connection between that rating and the remedy that SFFA sought and that the majority grants today: ending the limited use of race in the entire admissions process. In any event, after assessing the credibility of fact witnesses and considering extensive documentary evidence and expert testimony, the courts below found “no discrimination against Asian Americans.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 195, n. 34, 202; see id., at 195–204.
There is no question that the Asian American community continues to struggle against potent and dehumanizing stereotypes in our society. It is precisely because racial discrimination persists in our society, however, that the use of ​race in college admissions to achieve racially diverse classes is critical to improving cross-racial understanding and breaking down racial stereotypes. See supra, at 16. Indeed, the record shows that some Asian American applicants are actually “advantaged by Harvard’s use of race,” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 191, and “eliminating consideration of race would significantly disadvantage at least some Asian American applicants,” Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 194. Race-conscious holistic admissions that contextualize the racial identity of each individual allow Asian American applicants “who would be less likely to be admitted without a comprehensive understanding of their background” to explain “the value of their unique background, heritage, and perspective.” Id., at 195. Because the Asian American community is not a monolith, race-conscious holistic admissions allow colleges and universities to “consider the vast differences within [that] community.” AALDEF Brief 4–14. Harvard’s application files show that race-conscious holistic admissions allow Harvard to “valu[e] the diversity of Asian American applicants’ experiences.” Harvard College Brief 23.
Moreover, the admission rates of Asian Americans at institutions with race-conscious admissions policies, including at Harvard, have “been steadily increasing for decades.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 198. By contrast, Asian American enrollment declined at elite universities that are prohibited by state law from considering race. See AALDEF Brief 27; Brief for 25 Diverse, California-Focused Bar Associations et al. as Amici Curiae 19–20, 23. At bottom, race-conscious admissions benefit all students, including racial minorities. That includes the Asian American community.
Finally, Justice Thomas belies reality by suggesting that “experts and elites” with views similar to those “that ​motivated Dred Scott and Plessy” are the ones who support race conscious admissions. Ante, at 39. The plethora of young students of color who testified in favor of race-consciousness proves otherwise. See {{nsl2|supra, at 46–47|#46]}; see also infra, at 64–67 (discussing numerous amici from many sectors of society supporting respondents’ policies). Not a single student—let alone any racial minority—affected by the Court’s decision testified in favor of SFFA in these cases.
C
In its “radical claim to power,” the Court does not even acknowledge the important reliance interests that this Court’s precedents have generated. Dobbs, 597 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 53). Significant rights and expectations will be affected by today’s decision nonetheless. Those interests supply “added force” in favor of stare decisis. Hilton v. South Carolina Public Railways Comm’n, 502 U. S. 197, 202 (1991).
Students of all backgrounds have formed settled expectations that universities with race-conscious policies “will provide diverse, cross-cultural experiences that will better prepare them to excel in our increasingly diverse world.” Brief for Respondent-Students in No. 21–707, at 45; see Harvard College Brief 6–11 (collecting student testimony).
Respondents and other colleges and universities with race-conscious admissions programs similarly have concrete reliance interests because they have spent significant resources in an effort to comply with this Court’s precedents. “Universities have designed courses that draw on the benefits of a diverse student body,” “hired faculty whose research is enriched by the diversity of the student body,” and “promoted their learning environments to prospective students who have enrolled based on the understanding that they could obtain the benefits of diversity of all kinds.” Brief for Respondent in No. 20–1199, at 40–41 (internal ​quotation marks omitted). Universities also have “expended vast financial and other resources” in “training thousands of application readers on how to faithfully apply this Court’s guardrails on the use of race in admissions.” Brief for University Respondents in No. 21–707, p. 44. Yet today’s decision abruptly forces them “to fundamentally alter their admissions practices.” Id., at 45; see also Brief for Massachusetts Institute of Technology et al. as Amici Curiae 25–26; Brief for Amherst College et al. as Amici Curiae 23–25 (Amherst Brief). As to Title VI in particular, colleges and universities have relied on Grutter for decades in accepting federal funds. See Brief for United States as Amicus Curiae in No. 20–1199, p. 25 (United States Brief); Georgetown Brief 16.
The Court’s failure to weigh these reliance interests “is a stunning indictment of its decision.” Dobbs, 597 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 55).
IV
The use of race in college admissions has had profound consequences by increasing the enrollment of underrepresented minorities on college campuses. This Court presupposes that segregation is a sin of the past and that race-conscious college admissions have played no role in the progress society has made. The fact that affirmative action in higher education “has worked and is continuing to work” is no reason to abandon the practice today. Shelby County v. Holder, 570 U. S. 529, 590 (2013) (Ginsburg, J., dissenting) (“[It] is like throwing away your umbrella in a rainstorm because you are not getting wet”).
Experience teaches that the consequences of today’s decision will be destructive. The two lengthy trials below simply confirmed what we already knew: Superficial colorblindness in a society that systematically segregates opportunity will cause a sharp decline in the rates at which underrepresented minority students enroll in our Nation’s ​colleges and universities, turning the clock back and undoing the slow yet significant progress already achieved. See Schuette, 572 U. S., at 384–390 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (collecting statistics from States that have banned the use of race in college admissions); see also Amherst Brief 13 (noting that eliminating the use of race in college admissions will take Black student enrollment at elite universities back to levels this country saw in the early 1960s).
After California amended its State Constitution to prohibit race-conscious college admissions in 1996, for example, “freshmen enrollees from underrepresented minority groups dropped precipitously” in California public universities. Brief for President and Chancellors of the University of California as Amici Curiae 4, 9, 11–13. The decline was particularly devastating at California’s most selective campuses, where the rates of admission of underrepresented groups “dropped by 50% or more.” Id., at 4, 12. At the University of California, Berkeley, a top public university not just in California but also nationally, the percentage of Black students in the freshman class dropped from 6.32% in 1995 to 3.37% in 1998. Id., at 12–13. Latino representation similarly dropped from 15.57% to 7.28% during that period at Berkeley, even though Latinos represented 31% of California public high school graduates. Id., at 13. To this day, the student population at California universities still “reflect[s] a persistent inability to increase opportunities” for all racial groups. Id., at 23. For example, as of 2019, the proportion of Black freshmen at Berkeley was 2.76%, well below the pre-constitutional amendment level in 1996, which was 6.32%. Ibid. Latinos composed about 15% of freshmen students at Berkeley in 2019, despite making up 52% of all California public high school graduates. Id., at 24; see also Brief for University of Michigan as Amicus Curiae 21–24 (noting similar trends at the University of Michigan from 2006, the last admissions cycle before Michigan’s ban on race-conscious admissions took effect, ​through present); id., at 24–25 (explaining that the university’s “experience is largely consistent with other schools that do not consider race as a factor in admissions,” including, for example, the University of Oklahoma’s most prestigious campus).
The costly result of today’s decision harms not just respondents and students but also our institutions and democratic society more broadly. Dozens of amici from nearly every sector of society agree that the absence of race-conscious college admissions will decrease the pipeline of racially diverse college graduates to crucial professions. Those amici include the United States, which emphasizes the need for diversity in the Nation’s military, see United States Brief 12–18, and in the federal workforce more generally, id., at 19–20 (discussing various federal agencies, including the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence). The United States explains that “the Nation’s military strength and readiness depend on a pipeline of officers who are both highly qualified and racially diverse—and who have been educated in diverse environments that prepare them to lead increasingly diverse forces.” Id., at 12. That is true not just at the military service academies but “at civilian universities, including Harvard, that host Reserve Officers’ Training Corps (ROTC) programs and educate students who go on to become officers.” Ibid. Top former military leaders agree. See Brief for Adm. Charles S. Abbot et al. as Amici Curiae 3 (noting that in amici’s “professional judgment, the status quo—which permits service academies and civilian universities to consider racial diversity as one factor among many in their admissions practices—is essential to the continued vitality of the U. S. military”).
Indeed, history teaches that racial diversity is a national security imperative. During the Vietnam War, for example, lack of racial diversity “threatened the integrity and ​performance of the Nation’s military” because it fueled “perceptions of racial/ethnic minorities serving as ‘cannon fodder’ for white military leaders.” Military Leadership Diversity Comm’n, From Representation to Inclusion: Diversity Leadership for the 21st-Century Military xvi, 15 (2011); see also, e.g., R. Stillman, Racial Unrest in the Military: The Challenge and the Response, 34 Pub. Admin. Rev. 221, 221–222 (1974) (discussing other examples of racial unrest). Based on “lessons from decades of battlefield experience,” it has been the “longstanding military judgment” across administrations that racial diversity “is essential to achieving a mission-ready” military and to ensuring the Nation’s “ability to compete, deter, and win in today’s increasingly complex global security environment.” United States Brief 13 (internal quotation marks omitted). The majority recognizes the compelling need for diversity in the military and the national security implications at stake, see ante, at 22, n. 4, but it ends race-conscious college admissions at civilian universities implicating those interests anyway.
Amici also tell the Court that race-conscious college admissions are critical for providing equitable and effective public services. State and local governments require public servants educated in diverse environments who can “identify, understand, and respond to perspectives” in “our increasingly diverse communities.” Brief for Southern Governors as Amici Curiae 5–8 (Southern Governors Brief). Likewise, increasing the number of students from underrepresented backgrounds who join “the ranks of medical professionals” improves “healthcare access and health outcomes in medically underserved communities.” Brief for Massachusetts et al. as Amici Curiae 10; see Brief for Association of American Medical Colleges et al. as Amici Curiae 5 (noting also that all physicians become better practitioners when they learn in a racially diverse environment). So too, greater diversity within the teacher workforce improves student academic achievement in primary public ​schools. Brief for Massachusetts et al. as Amici Curiae 15–17; see Brief for American Federation of Teachers as Amicus Curiae 8 (“[T]here are few professions with broader social impact than teaching”). A diverse pipeline of college graduates also ensures a diverse legal profession, which demonstrates that “the justice system serves the public in a fair and inclusive manner.” Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 18; see also Brief for Law Firm Antiracism Alliance as Amicus Curiae 1, 6 (more than 300 law firms in all 50 States supporting race-conscious college admissions in light of the “influence and power” that lawyers wield “in the American system of government”).
Examples of other industries and professions that benefit from race-conscious college admissions abound. American businesses emphasize that a diverse workforce improves business performance, better serves a diverse consumer marketplace, and strengthens the overall American economy. Brief for Major American Business Enterprises as Amici Curiae 5–27. A diverse pipeline of college graduates also improves research by reducing bias and increasing group collaboration. Brief for Individual Scientists as Amici Curiae 13–14. It creates a more equitable and inclusive media industry that communicates diverse viewpoints and perspectives. Brief for Multicultural Media, Telecom and Internet Council, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae 6. It also drives innovation in an increasingly global science and technology industry. Brief for Applied Materials, Inc., et al. as Amici Curiae 11–20.
Today’s decision further entrenches racial inequality by making these pipelines to leadership roles less diverse. A college degree, particularly from an elite institution, carries with it the benefit of powerful networks and the opportunity for socioeconomic mobility. Admission to college is therefore often the entry ticket to top jobs in workplaces where important decisions are made. The overwhelming majority ​of Members of Congress have a college degree. So do most business leaders. Indeed, many state and local leaders in North Carolina attended college in the UNC system. See Southern Governors Brief 8. More than half of judges on the North Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals graduated from the UNC system, for example, and nearly a third of the Governor’s cabinet attended UNC. Ibid. A less diverse pipeline to these top jobs accumulates wealth and power unequally across racial lines, exacerbating racial disparities in a society that already dispenses prestige and privilege based on race.
The Court ignores the dangerous consequences of an America where its leadership does not reflect the diversity of the People. A system of government that visibly lacks a path to leadership open to every race cannot withstand scrutiny “in the eyes of the citizenry.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 332. “[G]ross disparity in representation” leads the public to wonder whether they can ever belong in our Nation’s institutions, including this one, and whether those institutions work for them. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–707, p. 171 (“The Court is going to hear from 27 advocates in this sitting of the oral argument calendar, and two are women, even though women today are 50 percent or more of law school graduates. And I think it would be reasonable for a woman to look at that and wonder, is that a path that’s open to me, to be a Supreme Court advocate?” (remarks of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar)).
​By ending race-conscious college admissions, this Court closes the door of opportunity that the Court’s precedents helped open to young students of every race. It creates a leadership pipeline that is less diverse than our increasingly diverse society, reserving “positions of influence, affluence, and prestige in America” for a predominantly white pool of college graduates. Bakke, 438 U. S., at 401 (opinion of Marshall, J.). At its core, today’s decision exacerbates segregation and diminishes the inclusivity of our Nation’s institutions in service of superficial neutrality that promotes indifference to inequality and ignores the reality of race. *** True equality of educational opportunity in racially diverse schools is an essential component of the fabric of our democratic society. It is an interest of the highest order and a foundational requirement for the promotion of equal protection under the law. Brown recognized that passive race neutrality was inadequate to achieve the constitutional guarantee of racial equality in a Nation where the effects of segregation persist. In a society where race continues to matter, there is no constitutional requirement that institutions attempting to remedy their legacies of racial exclusion must operate with a blindfold.
Today, this Court overrules decades of precedent and imposes a superficial rule of race blindness on the Nation. The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated. The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial ​segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored.
Notwithstanding this Court’s actions, however, society’s progress toward equality cannot be permanently halted. Diversity is now a fundamental American value, housed in our varied and multicultural American community that only continues to grow. The pursuit of racial diversity will go on. Although the Court has stripped out almost all uses of race in college admissions, universities can and should continue to use all available tools to meet society’s needs for diversity in education. Despite the Court’s unjustified exercise of power, the opinion today will serve only to highlight the Court’s own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound. As has been the case before in the history of American democracy, “the arc of the moral universe” will bend toward racial justice despite the Court’s efforts today to impede its progress. Martin Luther King “Our God is Marching On!” Speech (Mar. 25, 1965).
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* ↑ As Justice Thomas acknowledges, the HBCUs, including Howard University, account for a high proportion of Black college graduates. Ante, at 56–57 (concurring opinion). That reality cannot be divorced from the history of anti-Black discrimination that gave rise to the HBCUs and the targeted work of the Freedmen’s Bureau to help Black people obtain a higher education. See HBCU Brief 13–15.
* ↑ By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the States in 1868, “education had become a right of state citizenship in the constitution of every readmitted state,” including in North Carolina. D. Black, The Fundamental Right to Education, 94 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1059, 1089 (2019); see also Brief for Black Women Scholars as Amici Curiae 9 (“The herculean efforts of Black reformers, activists, and lawmakers during the Reconstruction Era forever transformed State constitutional law; today, thanks to the impact of their work, every State constitution contains language guaranteeing the right to public education”).
* ↑ The majority suggests that “it required a Second Founding to undo” programs that help ensure racial integration and therefore greater equality in education. Ante, at 38. At the risk of stating the blindingly obvious, and as Brown recognized, the Fourteenth Amendment was intended to undo the effects of a world where laws systematically subordinated Black people and created a racial caste system. Cf. Dred Scott v. Sandford, 19 How. 393, 405 (1857). Brown and its progeny recognized the need to take affirmative, race-conscious steps to eliminate that system.
* ↑ See GAO, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, K–12 Education: Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, but Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines 13 (GAO–22–104737, June 2022) (hereinafter GAO Report).
* ↑ G. Orfield, E. Frankenberg, & J. Ayscue, Harming Our Common Future: America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown 21 (2019).
* ↑ E.g., Bennett v. Madison Cty. Bd. of Ed., No. 5:63–CV–613 (ND Ala., July 5, 2022), ECF Doc. 199, p. 19; id., at 6 (requiring school district to ensure “the participation of black students” in advanced courses).
* ↑ GAO Report 6, 13 (noting that 80% of predominantly Black and Latino schools have at least 75% of their students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—a proxy for poverty).
* ↑ See also L. Clark, Barbed Wire Fences: The Structural Violence of Education Law, 89 U. Chi. L. Rev. 499, 502, 512–517 (2022); Albert Shanker Institute, B. Baker, M. DiCarlo, & P. Greene, Segregation and School Funding: How Housing Discrimination Reproduces Unequal Opportunity 17–19 (Apr. 2022).
* ↑ See Brief for 25 Harvard Student and Alumni Organizations as Amici Curiae 6–15 (collecting sources).
* ↑ GAO Report 7; see also Brief for Council of the Great City Schools as Amicus Curiae 11–14 (collecting sources).
* ↑ See J. Okonofua & J. Eberhardt, Two Strikes: Race and the Disciplining of Young Students, 26 Psychol. Sci. 617 (2015) (a national survey showed that “Black students are more than three times as likely to be suspended or expelled as their White peers”); Brief for Youth Advocates and Experts on Educational Access as Amici Curiae 14–15 (describing investigation in North Carolina of a public school district, which found that Black students were 6.1 times more likely to be suspended than white students).
* ↑ See, e.g., Dept. of Education, National Center for Education Statistics, Digest of Education Statistics (2021) (Table 104.70) (showing that 59% of white students and 78% of Asian students have a parent with a bachelor’s degree or higher, while the same is true for only 25% of Latino students and 33% of Black students).
* ↑ R. Crosnoe, K. Purtell, P. Davis-Kean, A. Ansari, & A. Benner, The Selection of Children From Low-Income Families into Preschool, 52 J. Developmental Psychology 11 (2016); A. Kenly & A. Klein, Early Childhood Experiences of Black Children in a Diverse Midwestern Suburb, 24 J. African American Studies 130, 136 (2020).
* ↑ Dept. of Education, National Center for Education, Institute of Educational Science, The Condition of Education 2022, p. 24 (2020) (fig. 16).
* ↑ ProQuest Statistical Abstract of the United States: 2023, p. 402 (Table 622) (noting Black and Latino adults are more likely to be unemployed).
* ↑ Id., at 173 (Table 259).
* ↑ A. McCargo & J. Choi, Closing the Gaps: Building Black Wealth Through Homeownership (2020) (fig. 1).
* ↑ Dept. of Commerce, Census Bureau, Health Insurance Coverage in the United States: 2021, p. 9 (fig. 5); id., at 29 (Table C–1), https://www.census.gov/library/publications/2022/demo/p60-278.html (noting racial minorities, particularly Latinos, are less likely to have health insurance coverage).
* ↑ In 1979, prompted by lawsuits filed by civil rights lawyers under Title VI, the U. S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare “revoked UNC’s federal funding for its continued noncompliance” with Brown. 3 App. 1688; see Adams v. Richardson, 351 F. Supp. 636, 637 (DC 1972); Adams v. Califano, 430 F. Supp. 118, 121 (DC 1977). North Carolina sued the Federal Government in response, and North Carolina Senator Jesse Helms introduced legislation to block federal desegregation efforts. 3 App. 1688. UNC praised those actions by North Carolina public officials. Ibid. The litigation ended in 1981, after the Reagan administration settled with the State. See North Carolina v. Department of Education, No. 79–217–CIV–5 (EDNC, July 17, 1981) (Consent Decree).
* ↑ See 1 App. 20–21 (campus climate survey showing inter alia that “91 percent of students heard insensitive or disparaging racial remarks made by other students”); 2 id., at 1037 (Black student testifying that a white student called him “the N word” and, on a separate occasion at a fraternity party, he was “told that no slaves were allowed in”); id., at 955 (student testifying that he was “the only African American student in the class,” which discouraged him from speaking up about racially salient issues); id., at 762–763 (student describing that being “the only Latina” made it “hard to speak up” and made her feel “foreign” and “an outsider”).
* ↑ The same standard that applies under the Equal Protection Clause guides the Court’s review under Title VI, as the majority correctly recognizes. See ante, at 6, n. 2; see also Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 325 (1978) (Brennan, J., concurring). Justice Gorsuch argues that “Title VI bears independent force” and holds universities to an even higher standard than the Equal Protection Clause. Ante, at 25. Because no party advances Justice Gorsuch’s argument, see ante, at 6, n. 2, the Court properly declines to address it under basic principles of party presentation. See United States v. Sineneng-Smith, 590 U. S. ___, ___ (2020) (slip op., at 3). Indeed, Justice Gorsuch’s approach calls for even more judicial restraint. If petitioner could prevail under Justice Gorsuch’s statutory analysis, there would be no reason for this Court to reach the constitutional question. See Escambia County v. McMillan, 466 U. S. 48, 51 (1984) (per curiam). In a statutory case, moreover, stare decisis carries “enhanced force,” as it would be up to Congress to “correct any mistake it sees” with “our interpretive decisions.” Kimble v. Marvel Entertainment, LLC, 576 U. S. 446, 456 (2015). Justice Gorsuch wonders why the dissent, like the majority, does not “engage” with his statutory arguments. Ante, at 16. The answer is simple: This Court plays “the role of neutral arbiter of matters the parties present.” Greenlaw v. United States, 554 U. S. 237, 243 (2008). Petitioner made a strategic litigation choice, and in our adversarial system, it is not up to this Court to come up with “wrongs to right” on behalf of litigants. Id., at 244 (internal quotation marks omitted).
* ↑ SFFA is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization founded after this Court’s decision in Fisher I, 570 U. S. 297 (2013). App. to Pet. for Cert. in No. 20–1199, p. 10. Its original board of directors had three self-appointed members: Edward Blum, Abigail Fisher (the plaintiff in Fisher), and Richard Fisher. See ibid.
* ↑ Bypassing the Fourth Circuit’s opportunity to review the District Court’s opinion in the UNC case, SFFA sought certiorari before judgment, urging that, “[p]aired with Harvard,” the UNC case would “allow the Court to resolve the ongoing validity of race-based admissions under both Title VI and the Constitution.” Pet. for Cert. in No. 21–707, p. 27.
* ↑ Generally speaking, top percentage plans seek to enroll a percentage of the graduating high school students with the highest academic credentials. See, e.g., Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 373 (describing the University of Texas’ Top Ten Percent Plan).
* ↑ SFFA and Justice Gorsuch reach beyond the factfinding below and argue that universities in States that have banned the use of race in college admissions have achieved racial diversity through efforts such as increasing socioeconomic preferences, so UNC could do the same. Brief for Petitioner 85–86; ante, at 14. Data from those States disprove that theory. Institutions in those States experienced “ ‘an immediate and precipitous decline in the rates at which underrepresented-minority students applied … were admitted … and enrolled.’ ” Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U. S. 291, 384–390 (2014) (Sotomayor, J., dissenting); see infra, at 63–64. In addition, UNC “already engages” in race-neutral efforts focused on socioeconomic status, including providing “exceptional levels of financial aid” and “increased and targeted recruiting.” UNC, 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 665. Justice Gorsuch argues that he is simply “recount[ing] what SFFA has argued.” Ante, at 14, n. 4. That is precisely the point: SFFA’s arguments were not credited by the court below. “[W]e are a court of review, not of first view.” Cutter v. Wilkinson, 544 U. S. 709, 718, n. 7 (2005). Justice Gorsuch also suggests it is inappropriate for the dissent to respond to the majority by relying on materials beyond the findings of fact below. Ante, at 14, n. 4. There would be no need for the dissent to do that if the majority stuck to reviewing the District Court’s careful factfinding with the deference it owes to the trial court. Because the majority has made a different choice, the dissent responds.
* ↑ SFFA also argues that Harvard discriminates against Asian American students. Brief for Petitioner 72–75. As explained below, this claim does not fit under Grutter’s strict scrutiny framework, and the courts below did not err in rejecting that claim. See infra, at 59–60.
* ↑ Justice Gorsuch suggests that only “applicants of certain races may receive a ‘tip’ in their favor.” Ante, at 9. To the extent Justice Gorsuch means that some races are not eligible to receive a tip based on their race, there is no evidence in the record to support this statement. Harvard “does not explicitly prioritize any particular racial group over any other and permits its admissions officers to evaluate the racial and ethnic identity of every student in the context of his or her background and circumstances.” Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d 126, 190, n. 56 (Mass. 2019).
* ↑ Relying on a single footnote in the First Circuit’s opinion, the Court claims that Harvard’s program is unconstitutional because it “has led to an 11.1% decrease in the number of Asian-Americans admitted to Harvard.” Ante, at 27. The Court of Appeals, however, merely noted that the United States, at the time represented by a different administration, argued that “absent the consideration of race, [Asian American] representation would increase from 24% to 27%,” an 11% increase. Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 191, n. 29. Taking those calculations as correct, the Court of Appeals recognized that such an impact from the use of race on the overall makeup of the class is consistent with the impact that this Court’s precedents have tolerated. Ibid. The Court also notes that “race is determinative for at least some—if not many—of the students” admitted at UNC. Ante, at 27. The District Court in the UNC case found that “race plays a role in a very small percentage of decisions: 1.2% for in-state students and 5.1% for out-of-state students.” 567 F. Supp. 3d 580, 634 (MDNC 2021). The limited use of race at UNC thus has a smaller effect than at Harvard and is also consistent with the Court’s precedents. In addition, contrary to the majority’s suggestion, such effect does not prove that “race alone … explains the admissions decisions for hundreds if not thousands of applicants to UNC each year.” Ante, at 28, n. 6. As the District Court found, UNC (like Harvard) “engages a highly individualized, holistic review of each applicant’s file, which considers race flexibly as a ‘plus factor’ as one among many factors in its individualized consideration of each and every applicant.” 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 662; see id., at 658 (finding that UNC “rewards different kinds of diversity, and evaluates a candidate within the context of their lived experience”); id., at 659 (“The parties stipulated, and the evidence shows, that readers evaluate applicants by taking into consideration dozens of criteria,” and even SFFA’s expert “concede[d] that the University’s admissions process is individualized and holistic”). Stated simply, race is not “a defining feature of any individual application.” Id., at 662; see also infra, at 48.
* ↑ The majority does not dispute that it has handpicked data from a truncated period, ignoring the broader context of that data and what the data reflect. Instead, the majority insists that its selected data prove that Harvard’s “precise racial preferences” “operate like clockwork.” Ante, at 31–32, n. 7. The Court’s conclusion that such racial preferences must be responsible for an “unyielding demographic composition of [the] class,” ibid., misunderstands basic principles of statistics. A number of factors (most notably, the demographic composition of the applicant pool) affect the demographic composition of the entering class. Assume, for example, that Harvard admitted students based solely on standardized test scores. If test scores followed a normal distribution (even with different averages by race) and were relatively constant over time, and if the racial shares of total applicants were also relatively constant over time, one would expect the same “unyielding demographic composition of [the] class.” Ibid. That would be true even though, under that hypothetical scenario, Harvard does not consider race in admissions at all. In other words, the Court’s inference that precise racial preferences must be the cause of relatively constant racial shares of admitted students is specious.
* ↑ In the context of policies that “benefit rather than burden the minority,” the Court has adhered to a strict scrutiny framework despite multiple Members of this Court urging that “the mandate of the Equal Protection Clause” favors applying a less exacting standard of review. Schuette, 572 U. S., at 373–374 (Sotomayor, J., dissenting) (collecting cases).
* ↑ The Court’s “dictum” that Mexican appearance can be one of many factors rested on now-outdated quantitative premises. United States v. Montero-Camargo, 208 F. 3d 1122, 1132 (CA9 2000).
* ↑ Justice Kavanaugh agrees that the effects from the legacy of slavery and Jim Crow continue today, citing Justice Marshall’s opinion in Bakke. Ante, at 7 (citing 438 U. S., at 395–402). As explained above, Justice Marshall’s view was that Bakke covered only a portion of the Fourteenth Amendment’s sweeping reach, such that the Court’s higher education precedents must be expanded, not constricted. See 438 U. S., at 395–402 (opinion dissenting in part). Justice Marshall’s reading of the Fourteenth Amendment does not support Justice Kavanaugh’s and the majority’s opinions.
* ↑ There is no dispute that respondents’ compelling diversity objectives are “substantial, long-standing, and well documented.” UNC, 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 655; Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 186–187. SFFA did not dispute below that respondents have a compelling interest in diversity. See id., at 185; Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 133; Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–707, p. 121. And its expert agreed that valuable educational benefits flow from diversity, including richer and deeper learning, reduced bias, and more creative problem solving. 2 App. in No. 21–707, p. 546. SFFA’s counsel also emphatically disclaimed the issue at trial. 2 App. in No. 20–1199, p. 548 (“Diversity and its benefits are not on trial here”).
* ↑ The Court suggests that promoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s vision of equality is a “radical” claim of judicial power and the equivalent of “pick[ing] winners and losers based on the color of their skin.” Ante, at 38. The law sometimes requires consideration of race to achieve racial equality. Just like drawing district lines that comply with the Voting Rights Act may require consideration of race along with other demographic factors, achieving racial diversity in higher education requires consideration of race along with “age, economic status, religious and political persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors.” Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 646 (1993) (“[R]ace consciousness does not lead inevitably to impermissible race discrimination”). Moreover, in ordering the admission of Black children to all-white schools “with all deliberate speed” in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 301 (1955), this Court did not decide that the Black children should receive an “advantag[e] … at the expense of” white children. Ante, at 27. It simply enforced the Equal Protection Clause by leveling the playing field.
* ↑ Today’s decision is likely to generate a plethora of litigation by disappointed college applicants who think their credentials and personal qualities should have secured them admission. By inviting those challenges, the Court’s opinion promotes chaos and incentivizes universities to convert their admissions programs into inflexible systems focused on mechanical factors, which will harm all students.
* ↑ The Court suggests that the term “Asian American” was developed by respondents because they are “uninterested” in whether Asian American students “are adequately represented.” Ante, at 25; see also ante, at 5 (Gorsuch, J., concurring) (suggesting that “[b]ureaucrats” devised a system that grouped all Asian Americans into a single racial category). That argument offends the history of that term. “The term ‘Asian American’ was coined in the late 1960s by Asian American activists—mostly college students—to unify Asian ethnic groups that shared common experiences of race-based violence and discrimination and to advocate for civil rights and visibility.” Brief for Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund et al. as Amici Curiae 9 (AALDEF Brief).
* ↑ Justice Kavanaugh’s reading, in particular, is quite puzzling. Unlike the majority, which concludes that respondents’ programs should have an end point, Justice Kavanaugh suggests that Grutter itself has an expiration date. He agrees that racial inequality persists, ante, at 7–8, but at the same time suggests that race-conscious affirmative action was only necessary in “another generation,” ante, at 4. He attempts to analogize expiration dates of court-ordered injunctions in desegregation cases, ante, at 5, but an expiring injunction does not eliminate the underlying constitutional principle. His musings about different college classes, ante, at 7, n. 1, are also entirely beside the point. Nothing in Grutter’s analysis turned on whether someone was applying for the class of 2028 or 2032. That reading of Grutter trivializes the Court’s precedent by reducing it to an exercise in managing academic calendars. Grutter is no such thing.
* ↑ Before 2018, Harvard’s admissions procedures were silent on the use of race in connection with the personal rating. Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 169. Harvard later modified its instructions to say explicitly that “ ‘an applicant’s race or ethnicity should not be considered in assigning the personal rating.’ ” Ibid.
* ↑ At Harvard, “Asian American applicants are accepted at the same rate as other applicants and now make up more than 20% of Harvard’s admitted classes,” even though “only about 6% of the United States population is Asian American.” Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 203.
* ↑ K. Schaeffer, Pew Research Center, The Changing Face of Congress in 8 Charts (Feb. 7, 2023).
* ↑ See J. Martelli & P. Abels, The Education of a Leader: Educational Credentials and Other Characteristics of Chief Executive Officers, J. of Educ. for Bus. 216 (2010); see also J. Moody, Where the Top Fortune 500 CEOs Attended College, U. S. News & World Report (June 16, 2021).
* ↑ Racial inequality in the pipeline to this institution, too, will deepen. See J. Fogel, M. Hoopes, & G. Liu, Law Clerk Selection and Diversity: Insights From Fifty Sitting Judges of the Federal Courts of Appeals 7–8 (2022) (noting that from 2005 to 2017, 85% of Supreme Court law clerks were white, 9% were Asian American, 4% were Black, and 1.5% were Latino, and about half of all clerks during that period graduated from two law schools: Harvard and Yale); Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 25 (noting that more than 85% of lawyers, more than 70% of Article III judges, and more than 80% of state judges in the United States are white, even though white people represent about 60% of the population).
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