The Case: Key Documents and Background

The Supreme Court of the United States decided to hear the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard in its Fall 2022 term. Below are the oral arguments, briefs, debates and speeches plus a summary of case precedent and case background.

Case precedent and Summary Background

In January 2022, the U.S. Supreme Court announced that it will hear two cases challenging racial preferences in university admissions. The Lawsuits are brought by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard University and Students for Fair Admissions v. The University of North Carolina.

Read the complaint against Harvard here.

Read the complaint against the University of North Carolina here.

Previously, lower courts rejected both challenges, citing Supreme Court precedent allowing colleges and universities to consider race is as a means of promoting diversity. 

The SFFA v. Harvard case claims that Harvard discriminated against Asian-Americans by accepting Asian-American candidates for admission at lower rates than other racial groups while giving preference to black and Hispanic students with lower grades and test scores. The First Circuit Court of Appeals held that “Harvard’s limited use of race in its admissions process in order to achieve diversity…is consistent with the requirements of Supreme Court precedent.”

The North Carolina case alleges that the public university gave preferences to minority students at the expense of white and Asian applicants. In November 2021, a federal District Court held that the school’s program was a legitimate effort to produce a diverse student body.

After the North Carolina decision, Students for Fair Admissions appealed directly to the Supreme Court. SCOTUS agreed to consolidate the two cases and hear both the Harvard and UNC cases. Harvard President Bacow issued a statement shortly after the SCOTUS decision.

The latest SFFA lawsuits are a challenge to 40 years of judicial precedent allowing universities to favor select racial and ethnic groups in admissions policies for diversity purposes. Precedents date back to the 1978 Regents of the University of California v. Bakke case in which the court held that institutions could use race in a narrowly tailored way, as one factor among many, to advance the educational benefits of campus diversity. However, institutions could not employ quotas to achieve these ends.

Since then, universities have dropped open quota systems but have used racial preferences in admissions to achieve diversity.

Use of racial preferences in admissions was upheld in Gratz v. Bollinger(2003), Fisher v. University of Texas (2013) and Fisher v. University of Texas, or “Fisher II” (2016).

Nine U.S. states have banned race-based affirmative action: California (1996), Washington (1998), Florida (1999), Michigan (2006), Nebraska (2008), Arizona (2010), New Hampshire (2012), Oklahoma (2012), and Idaho (2020).

See a timeline of the related Supreme Court cases here.

See a timeline of key Affirmative Action cases here.