Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 145.0

6 

STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 
AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

Amendment.  That Clause commands that “[n]o State shall 
. . . deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal pro-
tection 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  citi-
zens . . . 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, leav-
ing  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 ex-
panded in 1866, which established a federal agency to pro-
vide  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, ed-
ucation “was the foundation upon which all efforts to assist 
the freedmen rested.”  E. Foner, Reconstruction: America’s 
Unfinished  Revolution  1863–1877,  p. 144  (1988).    Con-
sistent with that view, the Bureau provided essential “fund-
ing for black education during Reconstruction.”  Id., at 97. 
Black  people  were  the  targeted  beneficiaries  of  the  Bu-
reau’s programs, especially when it came to investments in 
education  in  the  wake  of  the  Civil  War.  Each  year  sur-
rounding  the  passage  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment,  the 
Bureau “educated approximately 100,000 students, nearly 
all of them black,” and regardless of “degree of past disad-
vantage.”  E. Schnapper, Affirmative Action and the Legis-
lative History of the Fourteenth Amendment, 71 Va. L. Rev.