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Malea Weaver

The Supreme Court banned affirmative action in June, reigniting a decades-long debate.

Affirmative action, the consideration of student characteristics like race in the college admissions process, has been a controversial topic in higher education for decades. The goal of affirmative action was to increase the racial diversity of college campuses and eradicate race-based discrimination in college admissions.

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled on two cases: Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.

Students for Fair Admissions claimed that affirmative action is discriminatory and sought to eradicate all race-conscious practices in the admissions process. The plaintiffs argued that Harvard and the University of North Carolina discriminated against Asian and White students while preferring admission to Black, Native American and Hispanic students.

As a result, the Supreme Court overturned the ruling from 2003 that enabled colleges to consider race as a factor in the admissions process. The SCOTUS declared both schools’ affirmative action policies unconstitutional, meaning all schools no longer have the legal right to utilize affirmative action policies as a factor in the college admissions process.

The high school class of 2024 will be the first to be affected by this ruling, leaving UHS seniors divided on the issue.

Supporters of the SCOTUS’s decision argue that the policies made college admissions more discriminatory, given that it involved granting advantages to one group and in turn, negatively impacting another.

“At some point, affirmative action turned from broadly addressing inherent inequalities for minorities to a leverage to use to carve out spots at elite universities,” senior Jasmine Jung said. “Rather than having this policy, the focus should be to navigate to holistic realities such as economic conditions, social position, medical struggles, or location.”

Those who are against affirmative action claim that eliminating affirmative action policies will guarantee that students get accepted to colleges based on their academic merit.

However, opponents of the SCOTUS’s decision state that the policies are necessary to end race-based discrimination in college admissions and alleviate the effects of past racism in education.

“Affirmative action accounts for the societal obstacles and lack of resources [that] traditionally marginalized groups face,” senior Diya Karthikeyan said. “Schools in lower-income neighborhoods may not be able to afford necessities such as technology, access to AP classes, extracurriculars, etc., which are all fundamental to the college application.”

Those who support affirmative action argue that having race as a factor in college admissions helps diversify college campuses and ensures students have a well-rounded education via exposure to various perspectives.

“College is about meeting people with different perspectives and ideas, so admitting applicants from one particular background and income level would be against that principle,” Karthikeyan continued.

Schools may still be able to consider nationality, family income and/or gender in their admissions process to bolster diversity at their campuses, but that notion is ambiguous at the moment.

Nine states had already entirely banned affirmative action as of 2022, including California, Arizona, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington. Given that no colleges or universities, both public and private, can consider race in admissions anymore, other states might follow suit and prohibit all affirmative action policies.

The new Supreme Court ruling leaves great ambiguity for the future and the class of 2024 will be the guinea pigs to this new precedent.