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20  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
Opinion of the Court 

made  clear—just  as  Justice  Powell  had—that  the  law 
school was limited in the means that it could pursue.  The 
school  could  not  “establish  quotas  for  members  of  certain 
racial groups or put members of those groups on separate
admissions tracks.”  Id., at 334.  Neither could it “insulate 
applicants  who  belong  to  certain  racial  or  ethnic  groups 
from the competition for admission.”  Ibid.  Nor still could 
it  desire  “some  specified  percentage  of  a  particular  group 
merely because of its race or ethnic origin.”  Id., at 329–330 
(quoting Bakke, 438 U. S., at 307 (opinion of Powell, J.)).
  These limits, Grutter explained, were intended to guard 
against two dangers that all race-based government action 
portends.  The first is the risk that the use of race will de-
volve into “illegitimate . . . stereotyp[ing].”  Richmond v. J. 
A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 493 (1989) (plurality opinion).
Universities  were  thus  not  permitted  to  operate  their  ad-
missions programs on the “belief that minority students al-
ways (or even consistently) express some characteristic mi-
nority viewpoint on any issue.”  Grutter, 539 U. S., at 333 
(internal quotation marks omitted).  The second risk is that 
race would be used not as a plus, but as a negative—to dis-
criminate against those racial groups that were not the ben-
eficiaries of the race-based preference.  A university’s use of 
race, accordingly, could not occur in a manner that “unduly 
harm[ed] nonminority applicants.”  Id., at 341. 

But  even  with  these  constraints  in  place,  Grutter  ex-
pressed marked discomfort with the use of race in college 
admissions.  The Court stressed the fundamental principle 
that “there are serious problems of justice connected with
the idea of [racial] preference itself.”  Ibid. (quoting Bakke, 
438 U. S., at 298 (opinion of Powell, J.)).  It observed that 
all “racial classifications, however compelling their goals,” 
were “dangerous.”  Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342.  And it cau-
tioned that all “race-based governmental action” should “re-
mai[n] subject to continuing oversight to assure that it will