Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard

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Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued October 31, 2022 Decided June 29, 2023
Full case name	Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College
Docket no.	20-1199
Citations	600 U.S. 181 (more)
Argument	Oral argument
Opinion announcement	Opinion announcement
Decision	Opinion
Case history
Prior	Judgment for Harvard, 397 F. Supp. 3d 126 (D. Mass. 2019); affirmed, 980 F.3d 157 (1st Cir. 2020); cert. granted, 142 S. Ct. 895 (2022)
Questions presented
(1) Should this Court overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, and hold that institutions of higher education cannot use race as a factor in admissions; and (2) Title VI of the Civil Rights Act bans race-based admissions that, if done by a public university, would violate the Equal Protection Clause. Is Harvard violating Title VI by penalizing Asian-American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasizing race, and rejecting workable race-neutral alternatives?
Holding
Harvard's admissions program violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit reversed.
Court membership
Chief Justice John Roberts Associate Justices Clarence Thomas · Samuel Alito Sonia Sotomayor · Elena Kagan Neil Gorsuch · Brett Kavanaugh Amy Coney Barrett · Ketanji Brown Jackson
Case opinions
Majority	Roberts, joined by Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, Barrett
Concurrence	Thomas
Concurrence	Gorsuch, joined by Thomas
Concurrence	Kavanaugh
Dissent	Sotomayor, joined by Kagan
Jackson[a] took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV; Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision^[1][2][3][4] of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.^[5] With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003)^[6] and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.^[b]

In 2013, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) filed suit against Harvard University in U.S. District Court in Boston, alleging that the university's undergraduate admission practices violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by discriminating against Asian Americans. In 2019 a district court judge upheld Harvard's limited use of race as a factor in admissions, stating lack of evidence for 'discriminatory animus' or 'conscious prejudice'.^[8]

In 2020, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the First Circuit affirmed the district court's ruling.^[9] In 2021, SFFA petitioned the Supreme Court, which agreed to hear the case.^[10][11] Following the appointment of Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, a member of the Harvard Board of Overseers at the time, the cases were split with Jackson recusing from the Harvard case while participating in the North Carolina one.^[12]

On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court issued a decision in Harvard that, by a vote of 6–2, reversed the lower court ruling. In writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts held that affirmative action in college admissions is unconstitutional. Because of the absence of U.S. military academies in the cases, the lack of relevant lower court rulings, and the potentially distinct interests that the military academies may present, the Court, limited by Article III, did not decide the fate of race-based affirmative action in the military academies.^[13][14]

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