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Page Number: 68

20  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
THOMAS, J., concurring 

Moreover, the very same Congress passed both these laws 
and  the  unambiguously  worded  Civil  Rights  Act  of  1866 
that clearly prohibited discrimination on the basis of race.3 
And, as noted above, the proponents of these laws explicitly 
sought equal rights without regard to race while disavow-
ing any antisubordination view.

JUSTICE  SOTOMAYOR  argues  otherwise,  pointing  to  “a 
number of race-conscious” federal laws passed around the
time of the Fourteenth Amendment’s enactment.  Post, at 6 
(dissenting opinion).  She identifies the Freedmen’s Bureau 
Act of 1865, already discussed above, as one such law, but 
she admits that the programs did not benefit blacks exclu-
sively.  She also does not dispute that legislation targeting 
the needs of newly freed blacks in 1865 could be understood 
as  directly  remedial.  Even  today,  nothing  prevents  the
States from according an admissions preference to identi-
fied victims of discrimination.  See Croson, 488 U. S., at 526 
(opinion  of  Scalia,  J.)  (“While  most  of  the  beneficiaries 
might  be  black,  neither  the  beneficiaries  nor  those  disad-
vantaged by the preference would be identified on the basis 
of their race” (emphasis in original)); see also ante, at 39.

 JUSTICE SOTOMAYOR points also to the Civil Rights Act of
1866, which as discussed above, mandated that all citizens 
have the same rights as those “enjoyed by white citizens.”
14  Stat.  27.    But  these  references  to  the  station  of  white 
citizens do not refute the view that the Fourteenth Amend-
ment  is  colorblind.  Rather,  they  specify  that,  in  meeting
the  Amendment’s  goal  of  equal  citizenship,  States  must
level up.  The Act did not single out a group of citizens for 

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3 UNC asserts that the Freedmen’s Bureau gave money to Berea Col-
lege at a time when the school sought to achieve a 50–50 ratio of black to
white students.  Brief for University Respondents in No. 21–707, p. 32. 
But,  evidence  suggests  that,  at  the  relevant  time,  Berea  conducted  its 
admissions without distinction by race.  S. Wilson, Berea College: An Il-
lustrated  History  2  (2006)  (quoting  Berea’s  first  president’s  statement
that the school “would welcome ‘all races of men, without distinction’ ”).