Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 27.0

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

19 

Opinion of the Court 

quotation marks omitted). 

No  other  Member  of  the  Court  joined  Justice  Powell’s 
opinion.  Four  Justices  instead  would  have  held  that  the 
government may use race for the purpose of “remedying the 
effects  of  past  societal  discrimination.”  Id.,  at  362  (joint
opinion of Brennan,  White,  Marshall,  and Blackmun,  JJ., 
concurring  in  judgment  in  part  and  dissenting  in  part).
Four  other  Justices,  meanwhile,  would  have  struck  down 
the Davis program as violative of Title VI.  In their view, it 
“seem[ed]  clear  that  the  proponents  of  Title  VI  assumed
that the Constitution itself required a colorblind standard 
on the part of government.”  Id., at 416 (Stevens, J., joined 
by Burger, C. J., and Stewart and Rehnquist, JJ., concur-
ring in judgment in part and dissenting in part).  The Davis 
program therefore flatly contravened a core “principle im-
bedded  in  the  constitutional  and  moral  understanding  of
the times”: the prohibition against “racial discrimination.” 
Id., at 418, n. 21 (internal quotation marks omitted). 

C 

In  the  years  that  followed  our  “fractured  decision  in 
Bakke,” lower courts “struggled to discern whether Justice
Powell’s” opinion constituted “binding precedent.”  Grutter, 
539 U. S., at 325.  We accordingly took up the matter again 
in 2003, in the case Grutter v. Bollinger, which concerned 
the admissions system used by the University of Michigan 
law school.  Id., at 311.  There, in another sharply divided 
decision,  the  Court  for  the  first  time  “endorse[d]  Justice
Powell’s  view  that  student  body  diversity  is  a  compelling 
state interest that can justify the use of race in university
admissions.”  Id., at 325. 

The Court’s analysis tracked Justice Powell’s in many re-
spects.  As for compelling interest, the Court held that “[t]he 
Law  School’s  educational  judgment  that  such  diversity  is 
essential to its educational mission is one to which we de-
fer.”  Id., at 328.  In achieving that goal, however, the Court