Affirmative action is undead
SCOTUS may have “killed” it, but it will continue for a while.
The use of race as a factor in admissions has been a common controversy of the college admissions process for about fifty years now. The Supreme Court has just ruled in two linked cases against Harvard (6–2) and UNC (6–3) brought by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), stating that both schools unconstitutionally discriminated against Asian-American applicants. Justice Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case but wrote a dissent focused on the UNC case.
This is likely one of the most important Supreme Court cases to take place in the last twenty years. It marks a legal turning point, the first court case to say that race should not be be used as a factor in college admissions decisions. However, SFFA v. Harvard will not end the use of race as a factor in college admissions, much less affirmative action as a whole.1
The “Bakke” ground of modern affirmative action
In 1973, Allan Paul Bakke, an engineer working for NASA, applied to the UC-Davis medical school. Bakke was white, and was denied admission while less qualified applicants were admitted through a special program that reserved 16 out of 100 spots for minority applicants. This case went to the Supreme Court in 1978.