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20  STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT 

AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE 
JACKSON, J., dissenting 

individual’s resilience and likelihood of enhancing the UNC 
campus.  It  also  forecasts  his  potential  for  entering  the 
wider  world  upon  graduation  and  making  a  meaningful 
contribution to the larger, collective, societal goal that the
Equal Protection Clause embodies (its guarantee that the
United States of America offers genuinely equal treatment 
to every person, regardless of race). 

Furthermore, and importantly, the fact that UNC’s holis-
tic process ensures a full accounting makes it far from clear 
that  any  particular  applicant  of  color  will  finish  ahead  of 
any particular nonminority applicant.  For example, as the
District Court found, a higher percentage of the most aca-
demically  excellent  in-state  Black  candidates  (as  SFFA’s 
expert defined academic excellence) were denied admission
than similarly qualified White and Asian American appli-
cants.94  That, if nothing else, is indicative of a genuinely 

—————— 

94 See 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 617, 619; 3 App. 1078–1080.  The majority 
cannot  deny  this  factual  finding.    Instead,  it  conducts  its  own  back-of-
the-envelope  calculations  (its  numbers  appear  nowhere  in  the  District 
Court’s opinion) regarding “the overall acceptance rates of academically
excellent applicants to UNC,” in an effort to trivialize the District Court’s
conclusion.  Ante,  at  5,  n. 1.  I  am  inclined  to  stick  with  the  District 
Court’s findings over the majority’s unauthenticated calculations.  Even 
when the majority’s ad hoc statistical analysis is taken at face value, it 
hardly  supports  what  the  majority  wishes  to  intimate:  that  Black  stu-
dents  are  being  admitted  based  on  UNC’s  myopic  focus  on  “race—and 
race alone.”  Ante, at 28, n. 6.  As the District Court observed, if these 
Black students “were largely defined in the admissions process by their 
race, one would expect to find that every” such student “demonstrating 
academic excellence . . . would be admitted.”  567 F. Supp. 3d, at 619 (em-
phasis added).  Contrary to the majority’s narrative, “race does not even 
act as a tipping point for some students with otherwise exceptional qual-
ifications.”  Ibid.  Moreover, as the District Court also found, UNC does 
not even use the bespoke “academic excellence” metric that SFFA’s ex-
pert “ ‘invented’ ” for this litigation.  Id., at 617, 619; see also id., at 624– 
625.  The majority’s calculations of overall acceptance rates by race on 
that metric bear scant relationship to, and thus are no indictment of, how
UNC’s admissions process actually works (a recurring theme in its opin-
ion).