Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 70

22  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
THOMAS, J., concurring 

public aid law was necessary because that particular county 
was not providing certain services to local poor blacks.  Sim-
ilarly, South Carolina’s burden-shifting framework (where
the  substantive  rule  being  applied  remained  notably  race 
neutral) may have been necessary to streamline litigation
around the most commonly litigated type of case: a lawsuit 
seeking to remedy discrimination against a member of the
large  population  of  recently  freed  black  Americans.    See 
1870  S. C.  Acts,  at  386  (documenting  “persist[ent]”  racial 
discrimination by state-licensed entities). 

Most  importantly,  however,  there  was  a  wide  range  of
federal and state statutes enacted at the time of the Four-
teenth Amendment’s adoption and during the period there-
after  that  explicitly  sought  to  discriminate  against  blacks 
on the basis of race or a proxy for race.  See Rappaport 113–
115.  These laws, hallmarks of the race-conscious Jim Crow 
era, are precisely the sort of enactments that the Framers 
of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment  sought  to  eradicate.    Yet, 
proponents of an antisubordination view necessarily do not 
take those laws as evidence of the Fourteenth Amendment’s 
true meaning.  And rightly so.   Neither those laws, nor a 
small number of laws that appear to target blacks for pre-
ferred  treatment,  displace  the  equality  vision  reflected  in
the  history  of  the  Fourteenth  Amendment’s  enactment. 
This  is  particularly  true  in  light  of  the  clear  equality  re-
quirements  present  in  the  Fourteenth  Amendment’s  text. 
See New York State Rifle & Pistol Assn., Inc. v. Bruen, 597 
U. S.  ___,  ___–___  (2022)  (slip  op.,  at  26–27)  (noting  that 
text controls over inconsistent postratification history). 

II 
Properly  understood,  our  precedents  have  largely  ad-
hered  to  the  Fourteenth  Amendment’s  demand  for  color-
blind laws.4  That is why, for example, courts “must subject 
—————— 

4 The Court has remarked that Title VI is coextensive with the Equal
Protection  Clause.    See  Gratz  v.  Bollinger,  539  U. S.  244,  276,  n. 23