About | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline Law Journal Library | HeinOnline
LOG IN
LOG IN

1 1 (June 30, 2023)

handle is hein.crs/govemcj0001 and id is 1 raw text is: Congressional_______ ~.Research Service The Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action at Harvard and the University of North Carolina Updated June 30, 2023 On June 29, 2023, the U.S. Supreme Court issued a decision upending precedent permitting limited use of race in higher education admissions. In an opinion deciding a pair of cases, Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. University of North Carolina, the Court held that the schools' use of race in admissions violated the Constitution's equal protection principles. Many commentators had been expecting this outcome. This Sidebar considers the Court's history with racial classifications in higher education admissions, examines the majority opinion in the two cases, and addresses considerations for Congress. Precedent for Affirmative Action in Higher Education In 2003, building on its splintered 1978 decision in University of California Regents v. Bakke, the Supreme Court in Grutter v. Bollinger held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause allows limited consideration of race in higher education admissions. In general, equal protection requires that government entities-including state-run universities-avoid distributing benefits or burdens based on race, unless those classifications meet a high bar. To justify race-based action, the government must identify a compelling government interest and show that its policy is narrowly tailored to pursue that interest. This test is known as strict scrutiny. Judges and commentators regularly observe that government classifications using race usually fail strict scrutiny and are held unconstitutional. (In the Students for Fair Admissions cases, and in the Court's prior affirmative action precedent, the parties did not dispute that they engaged in race-based decisionmaking. This Sidebar therefore does not address the legal meaning of race or when a classification is based on race.) In Grutter, the Court held that colleges and universities can have a compelling interest in building student body diversity, justifying some use of race in higher-education admissions, at least as a plus factor in a holistic consideration of applicants. To justify the use of race, however, a university must first establish its interest in diversity and, second, show its policies consider race no more than needed. Congressional Research Service https://crsreports.congress.gov LSB10893 CRS Legal Sidebar Prepared for Members and Committees of Congress

What Is HeinOnline?

HeinOnline is a subscription-based resource containing thousands of academic and legal journals from inception; complete coverage of government documents such as U.S. Statutes at Large, U.S. Code, Federal Register, Code of Federal Regulations, U.S. Reports, and much more. Documents are image-based, fully searchable PDFs with the authority of print combined with the accessibility of a user-friendly and powerful database. For more information, request a quote or trial for your organization below.



Short-term subscription options include 24 hours, 48 hours, or 1 week to HeinOnline.

Purchase Access

Contact us for annual subscription options:

Contact Us

Already a HeinOnline Subscriber?

Log In

profiles profiles most