Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 182

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

43 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

the Members of this majority pay lip service to respondents’ 
“commendable” and “worthy” racial diversity goals, ante, at 
23–24, they make a clear value judgment today: Racial in-
tegration in higher education is not sufficiently important
to  them. 
“Today,  the  proclivities  of  individuals  rule.” 
Dobbs, 597 U. S., at ___ (dissenting opinion) (slip op., at 6). 
The majority offers no response to any of this.  Instead, it 
attacks a straw man, arguing that the Court’s cases recog-
nize that remedying the effects of “societal discrimination”
does not constitute a compelling interest.  Ante, at 34–35.  
Yet  as  the  majority  acknowledges,  while  Bakke  rejected
that interest as insufficiently compelling, it upheld a lim-
ited use of race in college admissions to promote the educa-
tional benefits that flow from diversity.  438 U. S., at 311– 
315.  It is that narrower interest, which the Court has reaf-
firmed numerous times since Bakke and as recently as 2016
in Fisher II, see supra, at 14–15, that the Court overrules 
today. 

B 
The Court’s precedents authorizing a limited use of race
in  college  admissions  are  not  just  workable—they  have 
been working.  Lower courts have consistently applied them
without  issue,  as  exemplified  by  the  opinions  below  and 
SFFA’s and the Court’s inability to identify any split of au-
thority.  Today, the Court replaces this settled framework 
with  a  set  of  novel  restraints  that  create  troubling  equal
protection  problems  and  share  one  common  purpose:  to
make it impossible to use race in a holistic way in college
admissions, where it is much needed. 

1 
The  Court  argues  that  Harvard’s  and  UNC’s  programs
must end because they unfairly disadvantage some racial 
groups.  According  to  the  Court,  college  admissions  are  a 
“zero-sum” game and respondents’ use of race unfairly “ad-