Document ID: ./input/supremecourt_opinions/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_l6gn.pdf
Page Number: 194

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

55 

SOTOMAYOR, J., dissenting 

why this Court’s precedents have never imposed the major-
ity’s strict deadline: Institutions cannot predict the future. 
Speculating about a day when consideration of race will be-
come  unnecessary  is  arbitrary  at  best  and  frivolous  at 
worst.  There  is  no  constitutional  duty  to  engage  in  that
type of shallow guesswork.37 

Harvard and UNC engage in the ongoing review that the
Court’s precedents demand.  They “use [their] data to scru-
tinize the fairness of [their] admissions program[s]; to as-
sess whether changing demographics have undermined the 
need for a race-conscious policy; and to identify the effects, 
both  positive  and  negative,  of  the  affirmative-action 
measures [they] dee[m] necessary.”  Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 
388.  The Court holds, however, that respondents’ attention
to  numbers  amounts  to  unconstitutional  racial  balancing. 
Ante, at 30–32.  But “ ‘[s]ome attention to numbers’ ” is both 
necessary and permissible.  Grutter, 539 U. S., at 336 (quot-
ing Bakke, 438 U. S., at 323).  Universities cannot blindly
operate  their  limited  race-conscious  programs  without  re-
gard for any quantitative information.  “Increasing minor-
ity enrollment [is] instrumental to th[e] educational bene-
fits” that respondents seek to achieve, Fisher II, 579 U. S., 
at 381, and statistics, data, and numbers “have some value 

—————— 

37 JUSTICE KAVANAUGH’s reading, in particular, is quite puzzling.  Un-
like  the  majority,  which  concludes  that  respondents’  programs  should
have an end point, JUSTICE KAVANAUGH suggests that Grutter itself has 
an expiration date.  He agrees that racial inequality persists, ante, at 7– 
8, but at the same time suggests that race-conscious affirmative action 
was only necessary in “another generation,” ante, at 4.  He attempts to
analogize expiration dates of court-ordered injunctions in desegregation 
cases, ante, at 5, but an expiring injunction does not eliminate the un-
derlying  constitutional  principle.    His  musings  about  different  college 
classes,  ante,  at  7,  n. 1,  are  also  entirely  beside  the  point.    Nothing  in 
Grutter’s analysis turned on whether someone was applying for the class 
of 2028 or 2032.  That reading of Grutter trivializes the Court’s precedent 
by reducing it to an exercise in managing academic calendars.  Grutter 
is no such thing.