Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 91.0

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

43 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

whether  those  benefits  outweigh  the  burdens  thrust  onto
other racial groups.

As the Court’s opinion today explains, the zero-sum na-
ture  of  college  admissions—where  students  compete  for  a 
finite number of seats in each school’s entering class—aptly 
demonstrates the point.  Ante, at 27.9  Petitioner here rep-
resents Asian Americans who allege that, at the margins, 
Asian  applicants  were  denied  admission  because  of  their 
race.  Yet, Asian Americans can hardly be described as the 
beneficiaries  of  historical  racial  advantages.  To  the  con-
trary, our Nation’s first immigration ban targeted the Chi-
nese, in part, based on “worker resentment of the low wage 
rates accepted by Chinese workers.”  U. S. Commission on 
Civil Rights, Civil Rights Issues Facing Asian Americans in
the  1990s,  p. 3  (1992)  (Civil  Rights  Issues);  Act  of  May  6,
1882, ch. 126, 22 Stat. 58–59. 

In  subsequent  years,  “strong  anti-Asian  sentiments  in
the Western States led to the adoption of many discrimina-
tory  laws  at  the  State  and  local  levels,  similar  to  those 
aimed  at  blacks  in  the  South,”  and  “segregation  in  public 
facilities, including schools, was quite common until after 
the Second World War.”  Civil Rights Issues 7; see also S. 
Hinnershitz, A Different Shade of Justice: Asian American 
—————— 

9 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR  apparently  believes  that  race-conscious  admis-
sion programs can somehow increase the chances that members of cer-
tain races (blacks and Hispanics) are admitted without decreasing the 
chances of admission for members of other races (Asians).  See post, at 
58–59.  This simply defies mathematics.  In a zero-sum game like college 
admissions, any sorting mechanism that takes race into account in any 
way, see post, at 27 (opinion of JACKSON, J.) (defending such a system), 
has discriminated based on race to the benefit of some races and the det-
riment of others.  And, the universities here admit that race is determi-
native in at least some of their admissions decisions.  See, e.g., Tr. of Oral 
Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 67; 567 F. Supp. 3d 580, 633 (MDNC 2021); see
also  397  F. Supp.  3d  126,  178  (Mass.  2019)  (noting  that,  for  Harvard, 
“race is a determinative tip for” a significant percentage “of all admitted 
African American and Hispanic applicants”); ante, at 5, n. 1 (describing
the role that race plays in the universities’ admissions processes).