As he began reading excerpts of his decision eviscerating college affirmative action, in a hushed courtroom Thursday, Chief Justice John Roberts delivered on a singular long-held goal.
He had won a majority to roll back 45 years of Supreme Court precedent to further his view that race, for better or worse, should not matter.
“Racial classifications are simply too pernicious,” Roberts said at the beginning of what would be 50 minutes of high drama in the courtroom.
The majority’s rejection of race-based admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina – programs replicated in schools nationwide – amounts to a seismic reversal of court reasoning and regard for the value of campus diversity.
The decision was not unexpected, given that the right wing of the bench had been bolstered in recent years, including by three appointees of former President Donald Trump. And Roberts himself had been pressing for such an outcome for decades. “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating based on race,” he had written in a 2007 case.
Still, the full weight of the historic moment was felt in the white marble setting as Roberts, Sonia Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas all read excerpts of their opinions. Thomas, an African American who has opposed racial remedies and who joined the Roberts’ decision, noted at the outset of his presentation that he rarely takes the unusual step of reading aloud a separate statement.
Sotomayor, the nation’s first Hispanic on the high court, spoke for the dissenting justices, going on more than twice as long as Roberts. “The court’s decision today is profoundly wrong,” she declared, referring later to, “the court’s own impotence in the face of an America whose cries for equality resound.” The practices in dispute have historically created opportunities for Blacks, Hispanics and other minorities that have traditionally been underrepresented on campuses.
In seats below the elevated bench sat US Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar, who had urged the justices to uphold college affirmative action, and her team from the Department of Justice. Most of the spectator benches were filled, as were the justices’ special guest seats. Jane Sullivan Roberts, a lawyer and the wife of the chief justice, slipped into her place just as the nine justices were ascending the bench and opinions were to be announced.
‘It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race’
Roberts has vigorously opposed racial remedies since his days as a young lawyer in the Ronald Reagan administration, in areas of the law from education to voting rights. Appointed to the Supreme Court in 2005 by then-President George W. Bush, Roberts has pushed the bench in a similar direction. He lamented in a 2006 redistricting case, “It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race.”
Roberts has long questioned the value of classroom diversity and suggested the 1954 Brown v. Board of Education landmark opinion, which struck down the separate-but-equal doctrine and began America’s school desegregation, prohibited assigning students based on race.
He reiterated a narrow interpretation of Brown on Thursday, writing, “The conclusion reached by the Brown Court was thus unmistakably clear: the right to a public education ‘must be made available to all on equal terms.’” And the chief justice insisted that the case was premised on the notion that the Fourteenth Amendment’s equal protection guarantee forbids the use of race as a factor in deciding educational opportunities.
The three dissenting justices – Sotomayor, joined by Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman – disputed Roberts’ interpretation of constitutional history and said in their opinion that “Brown was a race-conscious decision that emphasized the importance of education in our society.”
At bottom, Roberts said, “the Harvard and UNC admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause.” He was joined by Justices Thomas, Samuel Alito, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.
Brushing back arguments from the two universities about the comprehensiveness of their screening and its educational goals, Roberts told courtroom spectators that the arguments amounted to: “Trust us.”
In his 40-page opinion, Roberts said Harvard and UNC engaged in racial stereotyping and lacked clear objectives as well as an end-point for their practices. “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” he said.
