The Decision

HELD: Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Read Opinion

“…The Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause. Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.

At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise…

[However], universities may not simply establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today… 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. 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.”