Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 117.0

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

11 

GORSUCH, J., concurring 

admissions policies mandate that race is taken into consid-
eration”  in  this  process  as  a  “ ‘plus’  facto[r].”    Id.,  at  594– 
595.  It  is  a  plus  that  is  “sometimes”  awarded  to  “un-
derrepresented  minority”  or  “URM”  candidates—a  group
UNC defines to include “ ‘those students identifying them-
selves as African American or [B]lack; American Indian or 
Alaska  Native;  or  Hispanic,  Latino,  or  Latina,’ ”  but  not 
Asian or white students.  Id., at 591–592, n. 7, 601. 

At  UNC,  the  admissions  officers’  decisions  to  admit  or 
deny are “ ‘provisionally final.’ ”  Ante, at 4 (opinion for the 
Court).  The decisions become truly final only after a com-
mittee approves or rejects them.  567 F. Supp. 3d, at 599. 
That committee may consider an applicant’s race too.  Id., 
at 607.  In the end, the district court found that “race plays 
a role”—perhaps even “a determinative role”—in the deci-
sion to admit or deny some “URM students.”  Id., at 634; see 
also  id.,  at  662  (“race  may  tip  the  scale”).    Nor  is  this  an 
accident.  As at Harvard, officials at UNC have made a “de-
liberate  decision”  to  employ  race-conscious  admissions 
practices.  Id., at 588–589. 

While the district courts’ findings tell the full story, one 
can also get a glimpse from aggregate statistics.  Consider 
the  chart  in  the  Court’s  opinion  collecting  Harvard’s  data 
for the period 2009 to 2018.  Ante, at 31.  The racial compo-
sition  of  each  incoming  class  remained  steady  over  that 
time—remarkably so.  The proportion of African Americans
hovered between 10% and 12%; the proportion of Hispanics 
between 8% and 12%; and the proportion of Asian Ameri-
cans between 17% and 20%.  Ibid.  Might this merely reflect
the demographics of the school’s applicant pool?  Cf. post, at 
35 (opinion of SOTOMAYOR, J.).  Perhaps—at least assuming
the applicant pool looks much the same each year and the 
school rather mechanically admits applicants based on ob-
jective criteria.  But the possibility that it instead betrays
the  school’s  persistent  focus  on  numbers  of  this  race  and
numbers of that race is entirely consistent with the findings