Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf
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STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 
AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

harm inflicted by segregation and the “importance of edu-
cation to our democratic society.”  Id., at 492–495.  For 45 
years, the Court extended Brown’s transformative legacy to 
the context of higher education, allowing colleges and uni-
versities to consider race in a limited way and for the lim-
ited purpose of promoting the important benefits of racial
diversity.  This limited use of race has helped equalize edu-
cational  opportunities  for  all  students  of  every  race  and 
background  and  has  improved  racial  diversity  on  college 
campuses.  Although progress has been slow and imperfect, 
race-conscious  college  admissions  policies  have  advanced 
the Constitution’s guarantee of equality and have promoted 
Brown’s vision of a Nation with more inclusive schools. 

Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back dec-
ades of precedent and momentous progress.  It holds that 
race can no longer be used in a limited way in college ad-
missions to achieve such critical benefits.  In so holding, the
Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a con-
stitutional  principle  in  an  endemically  segregated  society 
where race has always mattered and continues to matter.
The  Court  subverts  the  constitutional  guarantee  of  equal
protection by further entrenching racial inequality in edu-
cation,  the very  foundation  of our democratic  government
and pluralistic society.  Because the Court’s opinion is not
grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equal-
ity embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent. 

I 
A 
Equal educational opportunity is a prerequisite to achiev-
ing  racial  equality  in  our  Nation.  From  its  founding,  the
United States was a new experiment in a republican form
of government where democratic participation and the ca-
pacity to engage in self-rule were vital.  At the same time, 
American society was structured around the profitable in-
stitution that was slavery, which the original Constitution