Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 185

46  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

ciety, in which institutions reflect all sectors of the Ameri-
can  public  and  where  “the  sons  of  former  slaves  and  the 
sons of former slave owners [are] able to sit down together 
at  the  table  of  brotherhood,”  is  precisely  what  the  Equal
Protection Clause commands.  Martin Luther King “I Have
a  Dream”  Speech  (Aug.  28,  1963).    It  is  “essential  if  the 
dream of one Nation, indivisible, is to be realized.”  Grutter, 
539 U. S., at 332.34 

By singling out race, the Court imposes a special burden 
on racial minorities for whom race is a crucial component of 
their identity.  Holistic admissions require “truly individu-
alized consideration” of the whole person.  Id., at 334.  Yet, 
“by foreclosing racial considerations, colorblindness denies
those who racially self-identify the full expression of their 
identity” and treats “racial identity as inferior” among all 
“other forms of social identity.”  E. Boddie, The Indignities 
of  Colorblindness,  64  UCLA  L. Rev.  Discourse,  64,  67 
(2016).  The  Court’s  approach  thus  turns  the  Fourteenth
Amendment’s  equal  protection  guarantee  on  its  head  and 
creates an equal protection problem of its own. 

There is no question that minority students will bear the 
burden of today’s decision.  Students  of  color  testified  at 

—————— 

34 The Court suggests that promoting the Fourteenth Amendment’s vi-
sion of equality is a “radical” claim of judicial power and the equivalent 
of “pick[ing] winners and losers based on the color of their skin.”  Ante, 
at 38.  The law sometimes requires consideration of race to achieve racial
equality.  Just  like  drawing  district  lines  that  comply  with  the  Voting 
Rights  Act  may  require  consideration  of  race  along  with  other  demo-
graphic factors, achieving racial diversity in higher education requires 
consideration of race along with “age, economic status, religious and po-
litical persuasion, and a variety of other demographic factors.”  Shaw v. 
Reno, 509 U. S. 630, 646 (1993) (“[R]ace consciousness does not lead in-
evitably to impermissible race discrimination”).  Moreover, in ordering
the admission of Black children to all-white schools “with all deliberate 
speed” in Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 301 (1955), this 
Court  did  not  decide  that  the  Black  children  should  receive  an  “ad-
vantag[e] . . . at the expense of” white children.  Ante, at 27.  It simply
enforced the Equal Protection Clause by leveling the playing field.