JUST IN: SCOTUS Strikes Down Affirmative Action In Ruling Against Harvard, UNC

Affirmative action has always struck conservatives as unconstitutional and morally wrong. Racial preferential hiring or acceptance is no more morally or constitutionally valid if it is done for whites or racial minorities. Now, the Supreme Court of the United States has issued a historic ruling that affirms the conservative view as the justices blocked Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (UNC) from using racial-based preferences in their application acceptance process.

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote in the majority opinion. “In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race.”

“Many universities have for too long done just the opposite,” he continued. “And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

The cases brought to the Supreme Court emanated from a whole coalition of students, prospective applicants, and concerned parents in 2014 who challenged the affirmative action policies of the universities on the grounds it violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act. The court sided with the students, applicants, and parents and overturned their previous 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger that upheld affirmative action in the university admission process.

In that 2003 case, however, one of the justices who voted in favor stated, “We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest [in student body diversity] approved today.” In effect, the court back then was of the opinion that its decision would not be permanent. While it has not exactly been 25 years since that decision, it has been surely long enough.

The university practice of holding quotas for certain groups was unfortunately not a new development. Back in the 1920s, the Ivy League tried to erect a quota system to limit the number of Jews who could go to their prestigious universities. The modern-day quota system, that of affirmative action, tends to disproportionately reject otherwise highly qualified Asian Americans from the university system.

Today though the United States moves closer to a truly colorblind society where as Martin Luther King Jr. once put it, people would “not be judged by the color of their skin but by the content of their character.”