Harvard affirmative action case: Supreme Court must defend color-blind Constitution
Supreme Court’s 2012 affirmative action case: A constitutional case that was the Supreme Court’s first to discuss affirmative action in racial admissions, the University of Michigan v. Little, the court’s decision on Tuesday said that the Constitution requires “strict scrutiny” for racial preferences. The opinion also said the government cannot justify a racial preference that results in “disparate impact” if it serves a “compelling interest.”
Supreme Court’s 2012 affirmative action case: A constitutional case that was the Supreme Court’s first to discuss affirmative action in racial admissions, the University of Michigan v. Little, the court’s decision on Tuesday said that the Constitution requires “strict scrutiny” for racial preferences. The opinion also said the government cannot justify a racial preference that results in “disparate impact” if it serves a “compelling interest.”
WASHINGTON — The Supreme Court had to defend its own color-blindness in a landmark white affirmative action case Tuesday, as it held that a university can use race as a factor in college admissions and rejected arguments that government can consider race in a way that is inconsistent with the Constitution’s principle of color-blindness.
In an opinion written by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg, the court in a 5-3 vote struck down the University of Michigan’s undergraduate admissions program as violating the principle of color-blindness enshrined in the Supreme Court’s 1957 decision in Brown v. Board of Education.
The court’s decision in the 2013 case, University of Michigan v. Little, was the first to address affirmative action in the context of a racial preference that is applied by universities for the purpose of obtaining an education.
A victory for the school’s case, Justice Alito wrote, “may have an adverse effect on university academic programs and the admission of disadvantaged students into higher education.”
But the decision was not just a decision about the university, said Michael Waldman, a former solicitor general of the U.S. Department of Justice who argued the University of Michigan case before the Supreme Court.
“It is also about whether race matters in government,” he said, arguing “this case is the first time a court has recognized that race could be a major consideration
