Here’s What’s Happening With Affirmative Action

Justice Jackson blasted the majority’s “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness.”

The scale of what has been lost is difficult to assess in the moment. But not entirely impossible.

Yet again, the Supreme Court’s conservatives just get rid of precedents that they don’t like.

If elite colleges owned up to their racism, the Supreme Court might rule differently.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-conscious policies in college admissions, ending decades of precedent that had allowed schools nationwide to use such programs to increase the diversity of their student bodies.

The effects of the Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action will take time to materialize—but a 2013 Harvard study found that after affirmative action ended in key states “sharp declines” in the workplace followed for Asian women, Black women and Hispanic men.

For decades, Richard Kahlenberg has pushed for a class-conscious approach to college admissions. He may finally get his wish, but it comes at a personal cost.

In a ruling on two related cases on Thursday written by Chief Justice John Roberts, the Supreme Court just ended affirmative action in higher education as we know it.

Read the court’s opinion here.