The Supreme Court announced on Monday that it will take up suits challenging the consideration of race as a factor in college admissions.
The Court will hear challenges by non-profit Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The group alleges that Harvard discriminates against Asian applicants, and that UNC uses race in admissions even though “race-neutral alternatives can achieve diversity.”
Arguments will likely be heard in spring of this year, with a decision by June.
“We are grateful the Supreme Court accepted these important cases for review,” SFA president Edward Blum said in a statement. “It is our hope that the justices will end the use of race as an admissions factor at Harvard, UNC and all colleges and universities.”
A federal judge ruled in favor of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in October 2021 following the SFA lawsuit, while a federal appeals court rejected SFA’s suit against Harvard in November 2020.
“Race is so interwoven in every aspect of the lived experience of minority students [that] to ignore it, reduce its importance and measure it only by statistical models misses important context,” U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs said in her ruling on the UNC suit.
“If Harvard were to abandon race-conscious admissions, African-American and Hispanic representation would decline by nearly half,” Harvard said in documents urging the Supreme Court not to take up the case.