President Trump’s administration rescinds policies encouraging affirmative action in college admissions

President Barack Obama meets with then President-elect Donald Trump in the Oval Office of the White House in 2016.

the guidelines, the administration “remains committed to enforcing the law and protecting all Americans from all forms of illegal race-based discrimination.”

The move comes amid controversies over affirmative action. Supporters of affirmative action point to studies that say diverse schools lead to better outcomes for white and nonwhite students. Many opponents say that students should be judged for admission on merit alone and that affirmative action discriminates against them for factors such as race that they cannot control.

The pending retirement of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy has left civil rights groups nervous about the future of several key issues, including the use of race in university admissions. Kennedy wrote the 4-3 majority opinion upholding the University

of Texas admissions program’s support of affirmative action in a 2016 case in which a white woman said she was not admitted partly because the school accepted members of minority groups as part of a program.

Trump is expected to nominate a conservative judge to replace Kennedy, who was the court’s swing vote on some issues, though he reliably voted with its conservative wing.

A lawsuit is making its way through a Massachusetts federal court over whether Harvard’s admissions process discriminates against Asian-americans.

The Justice Department has not intervened in that

case, also filed by Blum, or filed a friend-of-the-court brief. But it has opened a separate investigation into similar allegations against Harvard that a coalition of Asian-american groups filed in 2015. Other Ivy League universities have also come under attack for their admissions numbers when it comes to Asianamericans.

The issue has also hit elite public schools in New York City, where debate has grown over a plan to increase black and Latino enrollment in the schools that currently require a single test for admission and enroll Asian-americans at significantly higher numbers than their share of the local population.