Justices to hear challenge to race in college admissions

The conservative-dominated Supreme Court on Monday agreed to hear a challenge to the consideration of race in college admissions, adding affirmative action to major cases on abortion, guns, religion and COVID-19 already on the agenda.

The court said it will take up lawsuits claiming that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a state school, discriminate against Asian American applicants. A decision against the schools could mean the end of affirmative action in college admissions.

Lower courts rejected the challenges, citing more than 40 years of high court rulings that allow colleges and universities to consider race in admissions decisions. But the colleges and universities must do so in a narrowly tailored way to promote diversity. The court’s most recent pronouncement was in 2016, in a 4-3 decision upholding the admissions program at the University of Texas against a challenge brought by a white woman. But the composition of the court has changed since then, with the addition of three conservative justices who were appointed by then-President Donald Trump.

Two members of that four-justice majority are gone from the court: Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, and Justice Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018.

The three dissenters in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, remain on the court. Roberts, a moderating influence on some issues, has been a steadfast vote to limit the use of race in public programs, once writing, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”

The court already has heard arguments in cases that could expand gun rights and religious rights and also roll back abortion rights in a direct challenge to the Roe v. Wade ruling from 1973.

Earlier this month, the justices weighed in for the first time on President Joe Biden’s vaccine policies, halting a rule requiring a vaccine or testing at large businesses while allowing a vaccine mandate for most of the nation’s health care workers.

The affirmative action case probably will be argued in the fall. Both suits were filed by Students for Fair Admissions, a Virginia-based group run by Edward Blum. He has worked for years to rid college admissions of racial considerations, and the court’s new lineup breathed new life into his project.

The group is calling on the court to overturn its 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld the University of Michigan’s law school admissions program.