Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 146.0

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

7 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

753, 781 (1985).  The Bureau also provided land and fund-
ing to establish some of our Nation’s Historically Black Col-
leges  and  Universities  (HBCUs).    Ibid.;  see  also  Brief  for 
HBCU Leaders et al. as Amici Curiae 13 (HBCU Brief ).  In 
1867, for example, the Bureau provided Howard University 
tens of thousands of dollars to buy property and construct
its campus in our Nation’s capital.  2 O. Howard, Autobiog-
raphy 397–401 (1907).  Howard University was designed to 
provide “special opportunities for a higher education to the 
newly enfranchised of the south,” but it was available to all 
Black people, “whatever may have been their previous con-
dition.”  Bureau  Refugees,  Freedmen  and  Abandoned 
Lands, Sixth Semi-Annual Report on Schools for Freedmen
60  (July  1,  1868).1   The  Bureau  also  “expended  a  total  of
$407,752.21 on black colleges, and only $3,000 on white col-
leges” from 1867 to 1870.  Schnapper, 71 Va. L. Rev., at 798, 
n. 149. 

Indeed, contemporaries understood that the Freedmen’s 
Bureau  Act  benefited  Black  people.    Supporters  defended
the law by stressing its race-conscious approach.  See, e.g., 
Cong. Globe 632 (statement of Rep. Moulton) (“[T]he true
object of this bill is the amelioration of the condition of the 
colored people”); Joint Comm. Rep. 11 (reporting that “the 
Union men of the south” declared “with one voice” that the 
Bureau’s  efforts  “protect[ed]  the  colored  people”).    Oppo-
nents argued that the Act created harmful racial classifica-
tions that favored Black people and disfavored white Amer-
icans.  See, e.g., Cong. Globe 397 (statement of Sen. Willey) 
(the  Act  makes  “a  distinction  on account  of  color  between
the two races”), 544 (statement of Rep. Taylor) (the Act is 

—————— 

1 As  JUSTICE  THOMAS  acknowledges,  the  HBCUs,  including  Howard
University,  account  for  a  high  proportion  of  Black  college  graduates. 
Ante, at 56–57 (concurring opinion).  That reality cannot be divorced from 
the history of anti-Black discrimination that gave rise to the HBCUs and
the targeted work of the Freedmen’s Bureau to help Black people obtain
a higher education.  See HBCU Brief 13–15.