Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
Page Number: 87

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

39 

THOMAS, J., concurring 

taught us to beware of elites bearing racial theories.”  Par-
ents  Involved,  551  U. S.,  at  780–781  (THOMAS, J.,  concur-
ring).  We cannot now blink reality to pretend, as the dis-
sents  urge,  that  affirmative  action  should  be  legally 
permissible merely because the experts assure us that it is 
“good” for black students.  Though I do not doubt the sin-
cerity of my dissenting colleagues’ beliefs, experts and elites
have been wrong before—and they may prove to be wrong
again.  In part for this reason, the Fourteenth Amendment
outlaws government-sanctioned racial discrimination of all 
types.  The stakes are simply too high to gamble.7  Then, as 
now, the views that motivated Dred Scott and Plessy have 
not been confined to the past, and we must remain ever vig-
ilant against all forms of racial discrimination. 

C 

Even taking the desire to help on its face, what initially 
seems like aid may in reality be a burden, including for the
very people it seeks to assist.  Take, for example, the college 
admissions  policies  here.    “Affirmative  action”  policies  do
nothing to increase the overall number of blacks and His-
panics able to access a college education.  Rather, those ra-
cial policies simply redistribute individuals among institu-
tions of higher learning, placing some into more competitive 
institutions than they otherwise would have attended.  See 
—————— 

7 Indeed, the lawyers who litigated Brown were unwilling to take this 
bet, insisting on a colorblind legal rule.  See, e.g., Supp. Brief for Appel-
lants on Reargument in Nos. 1, 2, and 4, and for Respondents in No. 10, 
in Brown v. Board of Education, O. T. 1953, p. 65 (“That the Constitution
is color blind is our dedicated belief ”); Brief for Appellants in Brown v. 
Board of Education, O. T. 1952, No. 1, p. 5 (“The Fourteenth Amendment
precludes  a  state  from  imposing  distinctions  or  classifications  based 
upon  race  and  color  alone”).    In  fact,  Justice  Marshall  viewed  Justice 
Harlan’s Plessy dissent as “a ‘Bible’ to which he turned during his most
depressed  moments”;  no  opinion  “buoyed  Marshall  more  in  his  pre-
Brown days.”  In Memoriam: Honorable Thurgood Marshall, Proceedings 
of the Bar and Officers of the Supreme Court of the United States, p. X
(1993) (remarks of Judge Motley).