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22  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
Opinion of the Court 

IV 

Twenty years later, no end is in sight.  “Harvard’s view 
about when [race-based admissions will end] doesn’t have a 
date on it.”  Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, p. 85; Brief for 
Respondent  in  No.  20–1199,  p.  52.    Neither  does  UNC’s. 
567 F. Supp. 3d, at 612.  Yet both insist that the use of race 
in their admissions programs must continue. 

But  we  have  permitted  race-based  admissions  only 
within the confines of narrow restrictions.  University pro-
grams must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use 
race as a stereotype or negative, and—at some point—they 
must  end.  Respondents’  admissions  systems—however
well intentioned and implemented in good faith—fail each
of these criteria.  They must therefore be invalidated under 
the  Equal  Protection  Clause  of  the  Fourteenth  Amend-
ment.4 

A 
Because “[r]acial discrimination [is] invidious in all con-
texts,”  Edmonson v. Leesville Concrete Co., 500 U. S. 614, 
619 (1991), we have required that universities operate their 
race-based admissions programs in a manner that is “suffi-
ciently  measurable  to  permit  judicial  [review]”  under  the 
rubric of strict scrutiny, Fisher v. University of Tex. at Aus-
tin, 579 U. S. 365, 381 (2016) (Fisher II).  “Classifying and
assigning” students based on their race “requires more than 
. . . an amorphous end to justify it.”  Parents Involved, 551 
U. S., at 735. 

Respondents have fallen short of satisfying that burden. 

—————— 

4 The United States as amicus curiae contends that race-based admis-
sions  programs  further  compelling  interests  at  our  Nation’s  military 
academies.  No military academy is a party to these cases, however, and 
none  of  the  courts  below  addressed  the  propriety  of  race-based  admis-
sions  systems  in  that  context.    This  opinion  also  does  not  address  the 
issue, in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies 
may present.