Race-Conscious Measures to Achieve Student Diversity Are in Jeopardy after Supreme Court Arguments

The dust and ashes have settled from October 31, 2022’s five hours of fiery oral argument before the Supreme Court (the “Court”) on challenges to Harvard’s and the University of North Carolina’s (the “UNC”) use of race-conscious measures in student admissions. While the Court’s decision is not expected to be released until June 2023, most legal and academic experts expect the Court to find that both universities violated Title VI and that UNC, as a public institution, also violated the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause by using race as a factor in their admission processes. If the Court so rules, it will erase over 40 years of legal precedent allowing for the limited use of race to obtain a diverse student body.

Print this page