Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 192.0

Cite as:  600 U. S. ____ (2023) 

53 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

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  evi-
dence  that  the  racial  categories  that  respondents  use  are
unworkable.36 

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 ex-
piration date.  Ante, at 30–34.  This new durational require-
ment 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  neces-
sary”  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. 

—————— 

36 The Court suggests that the term “Asian American” was developed
by respondents because they are “uninterested” in whether Asian Amer-
ican 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 Amer-
ican’ was coined in the late 1960s by Asian American activists—mostly 
college students—to unify Asian ethnic groups that shared common ex-
periences 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 ).