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32  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
Opinion of the Court 

UNC’s admissions program operates similarly.  The Uni-
versity frames the challenge it faces as “the admission and 
enrollment of underrepresented minorities,” Brief for Uni-
versity Respondents in No. 21–707, at 7, a metric that turns
solely on whether a group’s “percentage enrollment within
the  undergraduate  student  body  is  lower  than  their  per-
centage within the general population in North Carolina,”
567  F. Supp. 3d,  at  591,  n. 7;  see  also  Tr.  of  Oral  Arg.  in
No.  21–707,  at  79.    The  University  “has  not  yet  fully
achieved  its  diversity-related  educational  goals,”  it  ex-
plains, in part due to its failure to obtain closer to propor-
tional representation.  Brief for University Respondents in 
No. 21–707, at 7; see also 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 594. 

The  problem  with  these  approaches  is  well  established. 
“[O]utright racial balancing” is “patently unconstitutional.” 
Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 311 (internal quotation marks omit-
ted).  That is so, we have repeatedly explained, because “[a]t 
the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection 
lies the simple command that the Government must treat
citizens  as individuals,  not  as  simply  components  of a  ra-
cial, religious, sexual or national class.”  Miller, 515 U. S., 
at 911 (internal quotation marks omitted).  By promising to
terminate their use of race only when some rough percent-
age of various racial groups is admitted, respondents turn
that principle on its head.  Their admissions programs “ef-
fectively assure[ ] that race will always be relevant . . . and 
that  the  ultimate  goal  of  eliminating”  race  as  a  criterion
“will never be achieved.”  Croson, 488 U. S., at 495 (internal 
—————— 
Asian students at Harvard varied significantly from 1980 to 1994—a 14-
year period that ended nearly three decades ago.  4 App. in No. 20–1199, 
at 1770.  But the relevance of that observation—handpicked and trun-
cated as it is—is lost on us.  And the dissent does not and cannot dispute 
that the share of black and Hispanic students at Harvard—“the primary
beneficiaries”  of  its  race-based  admissions  policy—has  remained  con-
sistent for decades.  397 F. Supp. 3d, at 178; 4 App. in No. 20–1199, at 
1770.    For  all  the  talk  of  holistic  and  contextual  judgments,  the  racial
preferences at issue here in fact operate like clockwork.