I’m usually cautious about predicting ultimate victories, but I’d warrant that explicit race preferences suffered a fatal blow yesterday in Michigan. The higher education establishment, and almost every other establishment, did all they could, fair and foul, to save them. But the Michigan electorate simply wasn’t buying.

Explicit preferences will linger on institutional life support a bit longer, and much mopping up will certainly be required. But the repudiation of preferences in the state of Gratz and Grutter is, quite unmistakably, their extinction event. Other means will be found to achieve similar ends, but a hallowed principle has been conclusively reaffirmed.

Stay tuned for the upcoming Supreme Court review of the constitutionality of educational color coding in the Meredith v Jefferson County Board of Education case.