The use of race in admissions decisions to some of America’s finest universities is another contentious and sensitive issue the US Supreme Court will address on Monday, following abortion and guns in the recent past.
And the conservative dominated court might be prepared to reverse course once more, just as it did in June when it invalidated the famous “Roe v. Wade” ruling from 1973 that protected a woman’s right to an abortion.
The use of race in admissions to Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC), the nation’s oldest private and public universities, respectively, will be the subject of two hours of oral arguments before the court.
Like many other selective universities, Harvard and UNC employ race as a criterion to try to ensure that minorities, particularly African Americans, are represented in the student body.
According to Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union, the “affirmative action” policy was born out of the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s to “help address our country’s long history of discrimination and systemic inequality in higher education” (ACLU).
Right-wing critics have attacked it since the beginning, and several white students have filed lawsuits over the years, alleging “reverse discrimination.”
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Affirmative action is prohibited at public institutions in nine states, including California, where voters rejected a 2020 attempt to reinstate the practice after doing so in a ballot measure in 1996.
Affirmative action has already been affirmed by the Supreme Court, most recently in 2016 by a single vote, but its opponents think the current right-leaning panel will give their arguments more consideration.
(with inputs from agencies)
