In yet another highly anticipated decision with consequences to be felt across the country, the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in higher education on Thursday, rolling back more than 40 years of precedent and casting a dark cloud over diversity efforts on college campuses. The decision along party lines found that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violated the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection. “The student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority. The court ruled 6-3 in the University of North Carolina case, and 6-2 against in the Harvard case.
“Universities all across the country will begin to experiment with a whole variety of admissions techniques that are race-neutral in the sense that race is not an explicit factor, but not race-neutral in the sense that they’re intended to produce diversity,” says Jeremy R. Paul, a professor of law and former dean of the Northeastern University School of Law.
