Washington Correspondent
The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled against affirmative action in college admissions. This landmark decision challenges decades of practices aimed at giving minority students more opportunities for higher education, by factoring racial criteria into the admissions process.
Favoring black students, these practices were contested by students from other backgrounds.
Complaints had been filed against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, two of the nation’s oldest institutions, by Students for Fair Admissions, which considered affirmative action n It was just another form of racial discrimination, and was done to the detriment of other students, especially Asians and Europeans, in violation of the 14th Amendment and civil rights laws.
“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating it entirely,” wrote the presiding judge, Justice John Roberts. “The student should be treated based on their experience as an individual, not on their race. For too long, many universities have done the exact opposite…and concluded, wrongly, that the essence of an individual’s identity is not the challenges they faced, the skills they had acquired or the lessons learned, but by the color of his skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate this”.
Justice Clarence Thomas, the second black judge to serve on the Court, a historic opponent of affirmative action, criticized these admissions policies as “unchecked, race-based preferences designed to ensure particular racial mixing in classrooms. “.
The three progressive judges criticized this ruling. “This decision rolls back decades of breakthroughs and progress,” Judge Sonia Sotomayor wrote. It “creates a superficial rule of disregard for color as a constitutional principle in a systematically segregated society, where race has always mattered and continues to matter…The Court ignores the dangerous consequences of an America whose leaders do not reflect the diversity of the people.
Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first black woman to serve on the Supreme Court, called the decision “a real tragedy for all of us.” “The United States has never been blind to skin color,” she added. Deeming race unimportant in law does not make it unimportant in life.” She even lashed out at Thomas, the Court’s other black judge: ‘Those who demand that race not be thought about refuse to see, let alone resolve… the race-based disparities that continue to hinder the realization of the full potential of our great nation”.
“The Court has effectively put an end to positive discrimination in university admissions, commented Joe Biden, and I strongly disagree with its decision”. “Discrimination still exists in America!” the president insisted, “and today’s ruling doesn’t change that…. It is one more obstacle that a student must overcome, and universities should recognize and value it… and be engines of social mobility. But today, too often, this is not the case. “This is not a normal court,” he finally asserted when asked if the Supreme Court had become a “rogue court”.
Previous attempts to have the practice overturned by the Supreme Court had failed, with judges divided on the issue. Dominated by a conservative majority since the three appointments of Donald Trump, the Court has just taken a decision almost as symbolically important as the cancellation last year of Roe v. Wade, removing constitutional guarantees to abortion.
“This is a great day for America,” Trump commented. “This is the decision that everyone has been waiting for and hoping for… We are returning to a completely merit-based system, and this is the way things should be!” he congratulated.