(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Friday will hand down its final opinions of the term, including highly-anticipated decisions on student loan forgiveness and free speech and LGBTQ+ protections.
The justices will issue decisions at 10 a.m. ET to finish the term it began back in October. Three cases remain out of the 59 argued.
Their rulings will decide the fate of tens of millions of Americans with federal student loans and have an impact on free speech rights and LGBTQ+ protections.
Already this week, the court handed down blockbuster decisions on affirmative action and election law.
The court’s conservative majority on Thursday struck down race-conscious admissions policies Harvard University and the University of North Carolina as unconstitutional, effectively ending decades of legal precedent and reshaping the college admissions process in the U.S.
On Tuesday, the court strongly rejected the “independent state legislature” theory, a fringe legal concept that threatened to upend state election laws around the nation if adopted in its most extreme form.
Here’s a closer look at the three remaining cases:
Student loan forgiveness
The Supreme Court will rule on two challenges to President Joe Biden’s student debt forgiveness plan, one brought by six Republican-led states and the other by two individual borrowers.
The cases are Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown.
Biden’s plan, which invoked emergency powers because of the economic hardship brought by the pandemic, would cancel $10,000 in student debt for all borrowers who made less than $125,000 and up to $20,000 for borrowers who also received Pell grants while they were in school.
Challengers contend the administration exceeded its authority while also unfairly excluding Americans who don’t qualify and costing loan servicers revenue.
The court appeared wary of the administration’s assertion the Department of Education had the power to unilaterally waive $400 billion in debt.
“We take very seriously the idea of separation of powers and that power should be divided to prevent its abuse,” Chief Justice John Roberts said during arguments back in February.
But questions remained on whether the plaintiffs even had legal standing to sue the administration and how they would be injured by the policy.
The White House, asked about the court’s pending decision earlier this week, continued to decline to say what a “Plan B” would look like.
First Amendment and LGBTQ+ protections
In 303 Creative LLC v. Elenis, the justices are being asked to resolve a case that pits the First Amendment right to free speech against legislation aimed at rooting out discrimination against the LGBTQ+ community and other groups.
Lorie Smith, a Colorado website designer, is challenging the state’s public accommodation law requiring her to serve LGBTQ+ customer or face a fine. Smith contends the measure forces her to express support for something that goes against her religious beliefs in violation of her right to free speech.
Lower courts ruled in Colorado’s favor last year, stating officials had an overriding interest in ensuring equal access to publicly available goods and services. But the Supreme Court’s conservative majority appeared sympathetic to Smith’s point of view during oral arguments.
(WASHINGTON) — Marianne Williamson, the Democratic presidential candidate, popular speaker and bestselling author of self-help books who is mounting a dark horse primary challenge to President Joe Biden, is returning to her campaign in earnest after a monthlong stay in England for the birth of her first grandchild.
“Now that I’m back, I’m going to be hitting the ground running,” Williamson told ABC News.
It’s a campaign trail that is markedly different. In that time, Williamson lost a second campaign manager, former President Donald Trump was indicted on federal charges that he denies, the president’s son Hunter reached a plea deal with prosecutors and six major candidates entered the Republican primary.
As Williamson reappears on the trail, with a slew of events scheduled in New Hampshire, Michigan, Massachusetts and Illinois, she addressed some of those topics in an interview with ABC News.
This month, Roza Calderón departed Williamson’s team as campaign manager just weeks after acting campaign manager Peter Daou left. It’s a shake-up that comes after some staffers on Williamson’s 2020 campaign detailed their experiences working with a candidate who allegedly exhibited “uncontrollable rage” and made staff cry, according to Politico.
“Somebody doesn’t like my blunt personality, my directness, then I’m sorry. Then, obviously, this wasn’t the right campaign for them,” Williamson said in response to these staffers’ accounts. “There are a lot of people who have worked for me who had nice things to say and with whom I get along very well.”
Williamson’s campaign argues the kinds of criticism she is facing usually only plagues other women. When ABC News asked Williamson what the fairest criticism of her is, she seemed to embrace her bluntness.
“Probably that I can be tough, but not tough like they say,” she said, adding, “I’m running for president after all. I think you need somebody who’s tough.”
However, the spiritual adviser said the reported comments attributed to her by former staff, and the top-level turnover plaguing her campaign, are not a reflection of her leadership abilities.
“We’ve got a good team,” she maintained. “And it takes time to get all that. Abraham Lincoln went through 12 generals to get to Ulysses S. Grant, and I don’t think anybody would say he wasn’t a good manager.”
Williamson faces an uphill battle against Biden, who has brushed off her calls for primary debates, something incumbent presidents have not participated in since the modern debate circuit began 75 years ago.
Biden continues to outpace her in polling by a yawning margin, according to FiveThirtyEight; and he is expected to easily lap her in the money race, too, having held eight big-dollar fundraisers this month, with two more planned in New York on Thursday. Notably, a lack of money troubled Williamson’s campaign in 2020, forcing her to lay off her entire staff before the first primary contest, as ABC affiliate WMUR reported at the time.
But she is holding out hope.
“American politics is very, very unpredictable,” she said.
Williamson said she’s not going to make the race personal. For her, that includes not weaponizing the agreement that Hunter Biden struck with prosecutors — still awaiting a judge’s approval — in which he would plead guilty to two misdemeanor tax charges and enter into a pretrial diversion program to avoid prosecution on a felony gun charge.
“I think what we need to remember is that Hunter Biden is not running for president,” Williamson said. “Hunter Biden is not his father and so Hunter Biden’s legal problems aren’t my business and they shouldn’t be yours.”
She later added that “it really has nothing to do with this race.”
Instead, Williamson said she will focus on Joe Biden’s job as president and what she criticizes as his administration’s “incremental approach” to addressing issues facing Americans, saying legislation the Biden campaign touts as victories — including the Inflation Reduction Act — don’t go far enough.
Williamson’s platform includes championing “fundamental economic reform,” universal health care, tuition-free college and free child care.
Biden’s reelection bid has received the backing of politicians whom Williamson herself aligns with, including Sen. Bernie Sanders of Vermont. Her 2024 campaign website states that Sanders was the only candidate in 2016 who acknowledged there was a “rigged” system and “wanted to do something about it.”
“If Sen. Sanders thinks that the incremental approach getting there that way is enough, I respect that that’s his opinion,” Williamson told ABC News. “But it’s not mine.”
Taking a swipe at a theme of Biden’s 2020 run and one he’s deploying once again in his reelection bid, Williamson said, “We’re not going to repair America until we help people repair their lives, and in order to do that you can’t just say we’re going to heal the soul of America.”
She wouldn’t assign a grade to Biden’s performance, though she said gives him an “A” for defeating Donald Trump in the 2020 election.
The prospect of a second Trump presidency is “really terrifying,” she said, in light of comments he made appearing to acknowledge and show off a sensitive military document after leaving office, according to an audio recording obtained by ABC News and other outlets.
She said she was “not shocked” by what Trump said, who has denied he had classified material in the interaction on the recording.
“What was, I think, most stunning about it is his lack of intellectual sobriety, you know, about something so important,” Williamson said. “These documents were about very, very serious military matters. And this man doesn’t even take seriously that democracy itself, the traditions of the presidency, or obviously the responsibilities of the president.”
Williamson also said she feels she should be taken more seriously. She resents her campaign being labeled a “long shot” by those, she said, seeking to delegitimatize her candidacy. She said she believes the biggest misconception of her is that she is a “crazy, crystal lady shrew.”
Williamson, who has never served in elected office, believes her lack of political experience is not an obstacle but rather an asset.
“The problem is not that we don’t have good political car mechanics in Washington,” she said, quoting a part of her pitch to voters. “The problem is that we are on the wrong road. And that’s what I know about.”
But asked if she would pick an elected official to be her vice presidential running mate, Williamson said, “Absolutely.”
“I think that would be a good idea, yes” she said. “Because we do need somebody in the room who knows those political mechanics.”
(WASHINGTON) — President Joe Biden on Thursday blasted the Supreme Court ruling setting new limits on affirmative action as a “severe disappointment,” saying, “we cannot let this decision be the last word.”
“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” Biden said, adding that “the court has once again walked away from decades of precedent.”
Saying “affirmative action is so misunderstood,” Biden said, “I believe our colleges are stronger when they are racially diverse. Our nation is stronger because we use — but because we are tapping into the full range of talent in this nation. I also believe that while talent, creativity and hard work are everywhere across this country, not equal opportunity, it is not everywhere across this country,” he said.
“We cannot let decision be the last word. I want to emphasize we cannot let this decision be the last word. While the court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for, ” he said.
“The truth is, we all know it, discrimination still exists in America,” he said. “Discrimination still exists in America. Discrimination still exists in America,” he repeated. “Today’s decision doesn’t change that. We cannot let the decision be a permanent setback for the country.”
Saying the nation needed “a path forward,” he proposed a new standard for colleges and universities, cautioning, “they should not abandon, let me say this again, they should abandon their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect all of America.”
“What I propose for consideration is a new standard where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants,” he said.
He said he was “directing the Department of Education to analyze what practices help build a more inclusive and diverse student bodies and what practices hold that back, practices like legacy admissions and other systems that — expand privilege instead of opportunity.”
As he left, when asked by a reporter whether this was a “rogue court,” Biden replied, “this is not a normal court.”
Later Thursday, after traveling to New York for fundraisers, in a rare live interview on MSNBC’s “Deadline: White House,” he explained his comment to anchor Nicole Wallace.
“It’s done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in … recent history,” Biden said. “And that’s what I meant by ‘not normal.'”
He pointed not just to the court’s decision on affirmative action ruling but to its decision to overrule Roe v. Wade.
“Take a look at how it’s — how it’s ruled on a number of issues that are — have been precedent for 50, 60 years sometimes,” Biden said, “and that’s what I meant by ‘not normal.'”
Slaven Vlasic/Getty Images for Tribeca Film Festival
(DOVER, Del.) — Sarah McBride is used to being first. She was the first openly transgender person to work in the White House, the first to speak at the Democratic National Convention and the first to become a state senator, in Delaware.
If the campaign she announced on Monday is successful, she will be the first transgender person to serve in Congress — representing Delaware’s sole congressional district — and the first openly transgender person to be elected at the federal level.
Because Delaware’s at-large district is solidly Democratic, competition in the race will likely play out during the primary next fall. The seat is currently held by Rep. Lisa Blunt Rochester, who announced last week that she is running for the U.S. Senate to fill the seat held by retiring Tom Carper.
McBride, 32, enters the race with endorsements from high-ranking Delaware lawmakers, support from LGBTQ advocacy groups and relationships with the Biden family. President Joe Biden wrote the foreword to her 2018 memoir, and she has called his late son, Beau, one of her mentors.
“I’m incredibly confident and optimistic going into this campaign that we will win in September of 2024 [during the primary] and then win in November of 2024,” McBride said. “I believe that Delaware is ready. We’ve shown that small states can do big things, and it’s time for us to do that again.”
On the day she launched her campaign, she told ABC News that she has been happy to answer questions about her trans identity. But, she said with a smile, gender is not at the core of her job description as an elected official and she didn’t seek office to be “the trans senator.”
“My day-to-day focus is not explaining gender identity to people,” she said. “My day-to-day focus is delivering tangible results for the constituents that I serve.”
McBride is aware that trans candidates face increased scrutiny of their electability at the same time that the number of trans officeholders is growing, she said. She’s also running at a time of rising anti-LGBTQ extremism across the U.S., according to recent assessments from the Institute for Strategic Dialogue, the Anti-Defamation League and GLAAD.
Conservative lawmakers have backed a wave of trans-related restrictions across the country, particularly around gender-affirming care for minors, which many Republicans say is inappropriate.
McBride sees in these trends a theme that cuts across civil rights movements in the U.S., she said: the “dual story of progress and pain.”
“This is absolutely a difficult moment for many in our country, including trans people,” she said. “But as has been the case before, we can turn that pain into progress as long as we summon the hope necessary to see this fight through.”
Electoral window widens for trans candidates
When she became a state senator in 2021, McBride joined the so-called “rainbow wave” of LGBTQ public officials who have taken office in recent years. There are currently 57 sitting U.S. elected officials who are openly transgender or nonbinary, up from 25 in 2019, according to the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund, an advocacy group.
Albert Fujii, a spokesperson for the Victory Fund, believes that as LGBTQ issues have become more and more mainstream, a candidate’s queer identity can be an asset. He pointed to the increasing number of trans and nonbinary elected officials as evidence that voters in blue and purple districts believe these candidates bring an important perspective to the table.
“Being LGBTQ+ is a strength,” Fujii said. “Not only are they running in record numbers, but they’re also winning in record numbers.”
Polling appears to back this up. About eight in 10 Americans say they are willing to vote for a well-qualified gay or lesbian candidate, up from 55% in 2007, Gallup polling in 2020 found.
But favorability varies widely across partisan lines, with Democrats significantly more likely to support the social acceptance of transgender people, according to Pew Research Center data from 2021.
In McBride’s ideal world, her candidacy — and other identity “firsts” — wouldn’t be historic.
“Ultimately, we should have a world where it’s not noteworthy that a person of any particular identity is able to fully participate in our democracy, including running for office and winning,” she said.
McBride’s vision of progress
“I think of myself as a Delawarean. I think of myself as a doer. I think of myself as someone who believes very deeply that we have to make government work better for people, both because they need it and also because it’s the only way to save our democracy,” she said.
She also mentioned her role as a caregiver in her personal life, telling ABC News that she helped care for her late husband, Andy Cray, who died in 2014 from cancer.
“And yes, I think of myself as a trans person. But that is just one aspect of who I am,” she said.
McBride expects her record on the issues is what would get her elected. Although there is more than a year until her primary, she has emerged as a strong contender in the race with a series of high-profile endorsements, including from state Attorney General Kathy Jennings and in the Delaware Legislature — from state Senate Majority Leader Bryan Townsend and 11 of her 14 Democratic colleagues.
She is also backed by the Human Rights Campaign, where she previously worked as national press secretary, the LGBTQ+ Victory Fund and the Equality political action committee.
Another candidate, Alexander Geise, has filed paperwork to run against McBride in the Democratic primary. So far, no Republicans have announced a bid for the seat.
While McBride avoids questions about specific political labels within the Democratic Party, her time in office indicates progressive bona fides. She played a leading role in passing laws for statewide family and medical leave and to ban housing discrimination for trans people.
She has named a host of progressive priorities on the campaign trail — including on health care, climate change and gun restrictions — and though she did not directly respond to questions about proposals like Medicare for All or a “Green New Deal” to address the warming climate, she said: “I will support any measure that expands access to health care. And I support any measure that’s going to reduce the threat of climate change in our society.”
“Voters are judging candidates based on their ideas and not their identities,” she said. “And I think it fundamentally undersells and undervalues Delaware voters to think that they care more about my gender than they do who’s going to deliver for them.”
ABC News’ Sherby Perez contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Thursday’s decision by the Supreme Court ends affirmative action in higher education as we know it, even as it allows schools to continue some limited consideration of an applicant’s race.
The 6-3 ruling by the court’s conservative justices will change the admissions process for public and private institutions and force the nation’s most selective schools to rethink and retool their strategies for building diverse student bodies.
Writing for the majority, Chief Justice John Roberts found that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. A conservative group, Students for Fair Admissions, had sued those schools over their race-conscious admissions programs, alleging intentional discrimination toward Asian American applicants.
Still, Roberts wrote, schools could be mindful of applicants’ race in a much more narrowly tailored way, such as through an application essay or narrative.
“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination. Or a benefit to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to assume a leadership role or attain a particular goal must be tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote, adding emphasis. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”
The impact from the decision will be felt most immediately in the college application process set to begin this fall for hundreds of thousands of high school students.
The Common App, which is used by a million students a year to apply to several colleges at once, has already updated its systems to allow schools to hide the race or ethnicity of an applicant.
In terms of numbers, the decision may mean fewer students of color admitted to the nation’s top colleges and universities — at least in the near term. Nine states had already banned affirmative action in public university admissions and the admissions rates for Black and Hispanic students subsequently plunged in some places.
For example, in the University of California system, Black and Hispanic enrollment dropped by half within two years at the Berkeley and Los Angeles branches after the use of race in admissions was banned in 1996. Today, after the state spent more than half a billion dollars to promote diversity in enrollment, Black undergraduate enrollment is 5% at UCLA and graduate enrollment is 6%. At UC Berkeley, 4% of undergraduates were Black in 2021.
At the University of Michigan, where the use of race was banned in 2006, Black undergraduate student enrollment dropped from about 7% in 2006 to 4.5% in 2022. The school has tried to focus on special preference for socioeconomic status but that has not proven a perfect proxy for race.
More broadly, the average Black-to-white student graduation rate gap at the top 12 public universities that do not use affirmative action was 10.1%, according to research from UCLA. The average gap at the top 12 public universities with affirmative action was 6%.
There are examples of schools where discontinuation of affirmative action has not had a dramatic impact. The University of Oklahoma, which banned the practice in 2012, told the high court that it has seen “no long term severe decline” in minority enrollment. And other schools in California have enrollment demographics that better match their populations.
One prospective Ivy League student, Alex Shieh, welcomed the ruling against affirmative action on Thursday, telling ABC News anchor David Muir: “I think that by getting rid of affirmative action, now we look at the individual student and what they’ve accomplished, and we can look at what barriers they’ve overcome, but we view them as an individual first and foremost as opposed to just viewing them as a blob in an amorphous, larger racial group.”
Still, some school officials fear a self-perpetuating problem: admitting fewer students of color will make them whiter and less attractive to prospective applicants of color.
“Given what we’ve seen in the past, are we going to enter a period where our campuses will be less diverse? Because that’s what we have seen in similar instances on the state level,” College of the Holy Cross President Vincent Rougeau told ABC News on Thursday after the ruling.
Rougeau is the first Black leader of the school, which is also Justice Clarence Thomas’ alma mater. Thomas joined the majority ruling against affirmative action and read his concurring opinion from the bench, underlining his view on the matter.
Holy Cross is evaluating how its own admissions will change.
“We’ve had some time to prepare and to think creatively about what we would do in response, and there’s a chance I believe that we’ll be able to continue to move forward on our goals towards diversity,” Rougeau said.
What alternatives will schools explore? Some have tried accepting a fixed percentage of top students from every school or geographic community in the state; some have focused on targeted outreach and mentoring programs; and some have put a special preference or emphasis on socioeconomic status.
Some schools are also looking at eliminating the use of standardized test scores, legacy admissions and even early decision programs — all because they are seen as advantaging white students to the detriment of getting more minority students enrolled.
But much remains unknown in the hours immediately after the Supreme Court sharply restricted how race can be used in college admissions going forward.
The majority’s complex decision has many ambiguities — including, in a footnote, making clear that military academies may continue to use race-based admissions because of “potentially distinct” and “compelling” interests for the government and national security.
Other questions and, potentially, more litigation could be raised down the line.
How exactly can issues of race raised in student essays be factored into decisions? Can schools still extend minority-focused scholarships and recruitment programs? To what extent can they use race-neutral strategies to achieve racial diversity on campus?
A slew of lawmakers, officeholders, advocates and more have weighed in on the ruling, with some hailing a historic victory for race-blind equality and others denouncing a “devastating blow” for minority access to education.
Rougeau, at Holy Cross, made this prediction: “I do think we have to be prepared for less diverse campuses in the short term, and the implications of what that means for our young people and for the future of our country.”
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca, Tal Axelrod and Patty See contributed to this report.
(NEW YORK) — Students debated the fairness of a landmark Supreme Court decision on Thursday that sets new limits on race as a factor in admissions to public and private colleges and universities.
The court held that the current race-conscious admissions policies in place at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, effectively upending more than 40 years of legal precedent that supports consideration of race in college admissions.
The decision does appear to leave open the opportunity for applicants to address race in an essay, for instance, stating that “nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university.”
For Bunmi Omisore, a student attending Duke University, addressing in an essay how race has impacted her as an African American woman would be difficult.
“If I were applying to college today, I would have to write about those traumas in my Common App essay. I would have to write about those traumas and those very hard experiences for admissions officers to accept the overwhelming truth that we all know — which is that it is hard to be a Black person in America. And I don’t think that’s fair,” Omisore told David Muir in an ABC News Special Report.
For students applying under the new standard, it is “going to be hard to see themselves as someone outside of their race” if they can only address it through an essay, as opposed to simply disclosing it as one factor among many considered in the admissions process, Omisore said.
“I think that now that students are forced to talk about racial discrimination, and their experiences with it, their obstacles with it in their college essays, they’re now being known by their race first, and by their academics and otherwise other experiences second,” she said.
Alex Shieh, a prospective student at Brown University, meanwhile countered that the high court’s ruling allows educational institutions to “view students for who they are as individuals.”
“I think this is a win for students all across America, because we shouldn’t be judging students based on their race when we’re deciding who gets in to what schools,” Shieh told Muir. “I think that by getting rid of affirmative action, now we look at the individual student and what they’ve accomplished, and we can look at what barriers they’ve overcome.”
Shieh said that as an Asian American applicant the idea of Brown’s admissions office considering his race “does make me feel a little bit uncomfortable.”
“Because that’s not something that I can control or that anyone can control,” he said. “I think that it’s unfair to judge someone based on that when there are really so many better ways to judge students — based on their character, based on their accomplishments.”
The Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled since 1978 that schools may consider the race of applicants in pursuing educational benefits from a diverse student body, so long as it was one factor among many considered and the schools did not use a quota system.
Thursday’s decision sided in part with Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group that argued that the affirmative action policies at UNC and Harvard discriminated against Asian American applicants.
The court said that it has “permitted race-based admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions. University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.”
Ahead of the highly anticipated ruling, the Common App, which is used by a million students each year to apply to several colleges at once, had already updated its systems to allow schools to hide the race/ethnicity of an applicant from their admissions teams.
ABC News’ Devin Dwyer and Alexandra Hutzler contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson accused the Supreme Court’s conservative majority of a “let-them-eat-cake obliviousness” on the issue of race in its landmark ruling on affirmative action.
The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down the way Harvard University and the University of North Carolina use race-conscious admissions policies, stating they violated the equal protections clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.
Chief Justice John Roberts, who authored the opinion, said the schools’ programs had employed race “in a negative manner” and lacked meaningful end points. Instead, the court said institutions of higher education can only consider how race has impacted an individual applicant through their personal experiences or narrative.
“In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite.”
The court’s three liberal justices — Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan — dissented.
Jackson, the first Black woman to serve on the bench, called the decision a “tragedy for us all.”
“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” she wrote in a dissent in the UNC case. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”
“And having so detached itself from this country’s actual past and present experiences, the court has now been lured into interfering with the crucial work that UNC and other institutions of higher learning are doing to solve America’s real-world problems,” she continued.
“No one benefits from ignorance. Although formal race linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways, and today’s ruling makes things worse, not better.”
Justice Sotomayor, who has publicly praised the impact of affirmative action on her education and career, also said “entrenched racial inequality remains a reality today.”
“Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal,” she wrote.
Justice Thomas, the court’s only Black man, has a sharply different view on affirmative action’s role in his life. He’s called the programs paternalistic and that he felt stigmatized after attending Yale Law School at a time when his race was taken into consideration.
In a rare move, Thomas read his concurring opinion aloud in court on Thursday and responded to some of Jackson’s arguments.
“Rather than focusing on individuals as individuals, her dissent focuses on the historical subjugation of black Americans, invoking statistical racial gaps to argue in favor of defining and categorizing individuals by their race,” Thomas wrote.
“As she sees things, we are all inexorably trapped in a fundamentally racist society, with the original sin of slavery and the historical subjugation of black Americans still determining our lives today … I strongly disagree.”
(WASHINGTON) — Lawmakers, legal experts, presidential candidates — past and present — and others are reacting on Thursday to a landmark ruling from the U.S. Supreme Court setting new limits on the use of affirmative action in college and university admissions.
In a speech from the White House, President Joe Biden tore into the decision, casting it as a step backward.
The court held, in a 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
While the court’s conservative wing ruled against affirmative action, the three liberal-leaning justices dissented.
The Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled since 1978 schools may consider the race of applicants in pursuing educational benefits from a diverse student body, so long as they did not use a quota system.
But on Thursday, Roberts, writing for the majority, found that Harvard and UNC’s “programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”
“At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Roberts continued.
Below are reactions from notable figures to the ruling:
Joe Biden
“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” the president said in his White House speech Thursday afternoon.
He added that “I believe our colleges are stronger when they are racially diverse. Our nation is stronger because we are tapping into the full range of talent in this nation.”
He also said he is ordering the U.S. Education Department to examine legacy admissions and “other systems that expand privilege.”
After delivering his remarks, Biden was asked by a reporter if the Supreme Court — governed by a 6-3 conservative majority — is a “rogue court,” to which he responded that it is not a “normal court.”
Universities in the ruling
UNC in a statement said that it was disappointed in the decision but reiterated its commitment to diversity in its student body.
“Carolina remains firmly committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and continues to make an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond. While not the outcome we hoped for, we will carefully review the Supreme Court’s decision and take any steps necessary to comply with the law,” UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said in a statement.
Harvard, too, released a statement insisting it would not take its eye off the goal of maintaining a diverse institution.
“We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday,” the school’s leadership said in a statement.
Political candidates
Republican presidential hopeful Mike Pence hailed the decision, saying in a statement: “There is no place for discrimination based on race in the United States, and I am pleased that the Supreme Court has put an end to this egregious violation of civil and constitutional rights in admissions processes, which only served to perpetuate racism. I am honored to have played a role in appointing three of the Justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision, and as President I will continue to appoint judges who will strictly apply the law rather than twisting it to serve woke and progressive ends.”
Vivek Ramaswamy, another GOP 2024 candidate and a biotech entrepreneur, wrote on social media that “affirmative action is a badly failed experiment: time to put a nail in the coffin & restore colorblind meritocracy.”
A spokesperson for a political group supporting former President Donald Trump’s own reelection bid tied the ruling to Trump’s own record in the White House, because three of the justices in the majority were nominated by him to the high court.
“President Donald Trump made today’s historic decision to end the racist college admissions process possible because he delivered on his promise to appoint constitutionalist justices,” the spokesperson, Karoline Leavitt, said. “America is a better nation as a result of the historic rulings led by Donald Trump’s three Supreme Court nominees.”
Trump himself later said the ruling marked “a great day for America.”
“This is the ruling everyone was waiting and hoping for and the result was amazing. It will also keep us competitive with the rest of the world. Our greatest minds must be cherished and that’s what this wonderful day has brought. We’re going back to all merit-based—and that’s the way it should be!” he said in a statement to ABC News’ Rachel Scott.
Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis, Trump’s nearest primary competitor, tweeted that the Supreme Court “correctly upheld the Constitution and ended discrimination by colleges and universities.”
“College admissions should be based on merit and applicants should not be judged on their race or ethnicity,” he wrote.
South Carolina Sen. Tim Scott, the only Black Republican in the Senate, also lauded the ruling, casting it as a sign of the progress that the country is making on race.
“This is a good day for America. Honestly, this is the day where we understand that being judged by the content of our character, not the color of our skin is what our constitution wants. We are continuing to work on forming this more perfect union. Today is better than yesterday, this year better than last year, this decade better than last decade. The progress that we’re seeing in this nation is palpable,” he said on Fox News.
Members of Congress
Various lawmakers in Washington quickly flooded Twitter with reactions, with Republicans celebrating the ruling as, in their words, a victory for fairness.
“Today’s decision by the Supreme Court is a welcome victory for countless students across the country — academia’s ivory towers should not divide and promote preferences based on the color of one’s skin. In America, fairness is the key to educational opportunity, where one’s success is judged by merit rather than arbitrary quotas,” North Carolina Rep. Virginia Foxx, the chair of the House Committee on Education and the Workforce, said in a statement.
“Affirmative action forces colleges to put students into a box. It discredits the hard work and diverse backgrounds that countless applicants have, and requires colleges to value one single characteristic above others. This is wrong and un-American,” tweeted Tennessee Sen. Marsha Blackburn.
And Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky said, in part, “For decades, the Court turned a blind eye as higher education prioritized illegal social engineering over merit. Today’s rulings make clear that colleges may not continue discriminating against bright and ambitious students based on the color of their skin.”
Democrats, meanwhile, lamented the decision as a blow to equity.
“The Supreme Court’s decision to strike down affirmative action is a devastating blow to our education system across the country. Affirmative action has been a tool to break down systemic barriers and we must continue to advance our ideals of inclusivity & opportunity for all,” New Jersey Sen. Cory Booker, one of three Black senators, tweeted.
“The Court’s decision to overturn long-standing precedent of Affirmative Action is a fatal blow to equitable & accessible education for all. Failing to consider race as a factor in admissions turns a blind eye to systemic failures of academic institutions to pursue equity,” added Georgia Rep. Hank Johnson.
Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the majority’s “misguided” ruling a “giant roadblock in our country’s march toward racial justice. … Nevertheless, we will not be daunted or deterred by this decision and we reaffirm our commitment to fighting for equal educational opportunities for all.”
Outside experts, observers and students
Affirmative action has contributed to the rise in students of color attending colleges and universities, experts told ABC News.
Researchers fear the progress made in racial equity in higher education will be reversed, even though they say affirmative action has not been a perfect solution.
“Historically, some of these places like [the University of North Carolina], you literally couldn’t go to UNC if you’re Black,” said Natasha Warikoo, a sociologist at Tufts University and researcher of racial inequity in education.
Attorney General Merrick Garland said in a statement Thursday that “the Department of Justice remains committed to promoting student diversity in higher education using all available legal tools. In the coming weeks, we will work with the Department of Education to provide resources to college and universities on what admissions practices and programs remain lawful following the Court’s decision.”
Bunmi Omisore, a student attending Duke University and UNC, told ABC News anchor David Muir during a special report on the network that the decision would not only force students to relive “trauma” in their college applications but would actually define them more by their race.
“The one thing that really is making me sad, I’ll just say today, is that my identity has to be my race, the struggles that I’ve gone through, the trauma I’ve gone through as an African American woman in the United States. If I were applying for college today, I would have to write about those traumas in my common app essay. I would have to write about those traumas and those very hard experiences for admissions officers to accept the overwhelming truth that we all know, which is that it is hard to be a Black person in America. And I don’t think that’s fair,” Omisore said.
“I think that now that students are forced to talk about racial discrimination and their experiences and their obstacles in their college essays, they’re now being known by their race first and by their academics and otherwise, other experiences second because they have to put that in the forefront to prove their experiences through racism in the United States.”
Alex Shieh, a prospective Brown University student, disagreed, telling Muir that the decision could help students be judged on their individual merits while recognizing the different ways racial identities are experienced.
“I think that by getting rid of affirmative action, now we look at the individual student and what they’ve accomplished, and we can look at what barriers they’ve overcome, but we view them as an individual first and foremost as opposed to just viewing them as a blob in an amorphous, larger racial group,” Shieh said.
“For most people, race is just a characteristic, it’s sort of the way that your body manifests,” Shieh said. “And I think for some students that does play a role in how they experience the world, but for some students it doesn’t. And I think that allowing them that option to express that in an essay, for instance, affords much more freedom, because race doesn’t affect everybody the same way.”
Edward Blum, the conservative activist who has led the legal battle against affirmative action for years and organized the group of Asian American students who brought the cases in Thursday’s ruling, similarly celebrated the decision.
“The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled. These discriminatory admission practices undermined the integrity of our country’s civil rights laws,” he said. “Ending racial preferences in college admissions is an outcome that the vast majority of all races and ethnicities will celebrate. A university doesn’t have real diversity when it simply assembles students who look different but come from similar backgrounds and act, talk, and think alike.”
The Obamas
Former first lady Michelle Obama wrote about her own experience as one of the few Black students on her college campus and said in a statement that “today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who’s wondering what their future holds — and what kinds of chances will be open to them.”
“Today is a reminder that we’ve got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools, workplaces, and neighborhood,” she said.
Former President Barack Obama, in a shorter statement, said: “Like any policy, affirmative action wasn’t perfect. But it allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it’s up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve — and help students everywhere benefit from new perspectives.”
ABC News’ Kiara Alfonseca, Adam Carlson, Hannah Demissie, Devin Dwyer, Ben Gittleson, Will McDuffie, Isabella Murray and Pierre Thomas contributed to this report.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court’s most senior conservative, Justice Clarence Thomas, and its most senior liberal, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, both rose from humble beginnings to join the elite ranks of Yale Law School — and both have publicly credited race-based affirmative action initiatives with helping them get there.
But both justices staked out starkly opposite positions on whether the policy should be allowed to continue, facing off in a pair of blockbuster cases that were decided on Thursday and sharply limited the use of race in private and public college admissions going forward.
The court held, in a 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that Harvard University and the University of North Carolina’s admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment. However, the majority decision appears to preserve consideration of race in a narrowly tailored way, as in through an individual applicant’s essay or narrative.
While the court’s conservative wing ruled against affirmative action, the three liberal-leaning justices dissented.
Thomas filed a concurring opinion to Roberts’ majority ruling. Both he and Sotomayor read their opinions from the bench — a rare move underlining how strongly each views the issue.
“While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold out enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles so clearly enunciated in the Declaration of Independence and the Constitution of the United States: that all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally under the law,” Thomas wrote.
Sotomayor, in dissenting, argued the majority was acting with willful ignorance to the discrimination still snaking through the world.
“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter,” she wrote. “The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.”
‘Radically different’
Earlier this year, ABC News took a close look at Sotomayor and Thomas’ views on affirmative action through the years.
“Even as these people have very similar experiences across the board, the way that they react to them is radically different,” Leah Wright Rigueur, an associate professor of history at Johns Hopkins University who specializes in race, politics and civil rights, previously said.
“Both had radicalizing experiences with racism and discrimination, and if it’s true that those radicalizing experiences can push someone to the left, then it’s also true that those radicalized experiences can push someone to the right,” she said.
In many ways, Sotomayor and Thomas’ disagreement mirrors public opinion, said Sarah Isgur, an ABC News legal contributor and former Justice Department attorney. “Their positions are really the epitome of the nuanced argument that we’ve been having around affirmative action for decades in this country,” Isgur said.
Polls show a strong majority of Americans both supporting the promotion of diversity on college campuses while also opposing explicit consideration of the race of student applicants.
“The divide is why states like California and Michigan — which are not red states — have banned affirmative action many years ago now,” Isgur added. “It’s because both sides make compelling points.”
Thomas, the court’s only Black man, grew up poor in still-segregated rural Georgia before getting accepted to Yale Law School in 1971.
“The effort on the part of Yale during my years there was to reach out and open its doors to minorities whom it felt were qualified,” Thomas testified during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearing, “and I took them at their word on that, and I have advocated that very kind of affirmative action.”
Just five years later, Sotomayor, who would become the court’s first and only Latina member, tread a similar path to Yale from the Bronx in New York City.
“[It was] one of the poorest neighborhoods in the United States when I was growing up,” Sotomayor said last year during a discussion at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Foundation. “And yet none of those challenges have stopped me reaching where I have, and I attributed all of it to my education.”
Sotomayor has called the use of race in college admissions an extension of the civil rights movement of the 1960s.
“Schools were saying, ‘We’re not diverse. We’re not giving opportunity to people from different backgrounds. That’s important for the society,'” she said in a 2014 appearance at Yale, discussing the origins of affirmative action.
“Without affirmative action, I couldn’t even have participated in the race of a good education because I didn’t even know that there was a race being run,” Sotomayor said.
In a series of decisions over 40 years, before Thursday’s decision, the Supreme Court had reaffirmed that schools can consider race in deciding which students to accept, endorsing the idea that a richly diverse learning environment on campus benefits all students.
“The court determined that the law school’s use of race as only one factor among many others, with no presumption of admission whatsoever, was appropriate under the circumstances,” Sotomayor said during her 2009 Senate confirmation hearing.
But now, the high court’s new conservative majority — led by Thomas — has changed course.
“By and large what they’re going to say is that race itself cannot be a determinative factor in one’s admission because a benefit to one race, quote unquote, is a detriment to another,” Isgur predicted ahead of the ruling.
Thomas has for years been the justice most publicly outspoken against affirmative action.
“Once again, it’s the elites. I mean, they’re telling us what we need,” he lamented of affirmative action programs in an appearance last year at a conservative legal conference.
But Thomas once seemed to support the necessity of race-conscious programs.
“I have initiated affirmative programs, I have supported affirmative action programs. Whether or not I agree with all of them, I think, is a matter of record. But the fact that I don’t agree with all of them does not mean that I am not a supporter of the underlying effort,” he testified during his 1991 Senate confirmation hearings.
As the only Black student in his boarding school seminary class, Thomas was later encouraged to apply to the College of the Holy Cross in 1968 and given a scholarship for racial minorities.
“I don’t think anyone who was a beneficiary of that, of those programs or that action, should apologize for it,” said Vincent Rougeau, president of Holy Cross and the school’s first lay and first Black leader.
“Clarence Thomas was a great student here. I mean, he was highly admired and respected,” Rougeau said, “and I have the deepest respect for his accomplishments and for his work at Holy Cross in terms of fighting for racial justice here.”
Thomas graduated with honors in the top 2% of his class, going on to Yale Law School at the same time it was openly recruiting more minority students.
“There’s a real pressure on us to be in boxes, and I would not be kept in a box during segregation, and I don’t like boxes now,” Thomas told ABC News in a 2007 interview. “I think that’s quite unfortunate. I wasn’t raised that way. I was raised trying to get out of them.”
Looking back on his experience, Thomas now calls affirmative action paternalistic — criticizing it in his dissents as a “faddish theory” that stigmatizes minorities, even if it extends an opportunity.
“One of the things that would happen when I was nominated to the court [was that people would assume] that I couldn’t possibly be as good as the white Yale graduates, because I obviously went to Yale because of the color of my skin,” he said in 2007.
“He’s saying that affirmative action hurt him overall, and that as the only Black member of the court, he’s an important and unique voice on that front,” Isgur said.
Some of Thomas’ critics see hypocrisy.
“That’s an absolutely fair criticism. He’d argue that he’s evolved, that his thinking has changed. And we do know, particularly when it comes to affirmative action, that people’s opinions change all the time,” said Rigueur.
“What I do see, however, somebody like Justice Clarence Thomas … is deeply cynical about the process. Justice Sotomayor takes a very different approach,” she said.
Sotomayor, who has publicly praised Thomas as a colleague and friend, described their difference of opinion as philosophical and foundational.
“It’s between the image of the person who pulls themselves up by the bootstraps and the person who believes that you need a lift to get you up sometimes,” she said at the Aspen Institute in 2017.
The contrast was on full display during oral arguments last year in the pair of cases that pit Harvard and UNC — which consider race in admissions — against a group of Asian American student challengers led by conservative legal activist Edward Blum.
“These two cases are about the restoration of the founding principles of our civil rights movement,” said Blum, founder of the group Students for Fair Admissions, which brought the suits. “Those principles are: A student’s race or ethnicity should not be used to help him or harm him in his chances of gaining admission to a competitive college.”
Before Thursday’s ruling, the schools said alternatives to affirmative action, such as a focus on socioeconomic status, simply aren’t as effective and that if the court struck down the practice, it would mean fewer minorities on campuses nationwide.
In a statement after the Supreme Court decision, UNC Chancellor Kevin Guskiewicz said, in part, that the school “remains firmly committed to bringing together talented students with different perspectives and life experiences and continues to make an affordable, high-quality education accessible to the people of North Carolina and beyond.”
Fordham University President Tania Tetlow said in an interview last year: “We would like to match the demographics of this generation as best we can because when we’re not doing that, we know we’re just missing talent,”
In the most recent Supreme Court decision to uphold affirmative action, from 2003, then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor famously predicted that in 25 years “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary” in America.
Sotomayor has said she agrees that affirmative action can’t be used forever, but told ABC News in 2014, “You got to find other ways to improve the selection process, but we haven’t found those ways just yet.”
For his part, Thomas insists the program never should have been allowed to begin with. “Show me in the Constitution where you get a right to separate citizens based on race,” he said in a 2020 documentary, “Created Equal.”
“What we’ve become comfortable with is thinking there is some good discrimination and some bad discrimination. Well, who gets to determine that?” Thomas said.
Both justices share a belief in equality and the power of education, but both are now deeply divided on the law and the future of affirmative action in America.
(WASHINGTON) — The Supreme Court on Thursday set new limits on affirmative action programs in cases involving whether public and private colleges and universities can continue to use race as one factor among many in student admissions.
The court held, in a 6-3 opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts, that Harvard and UNC’s admissions programs violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.
Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.
The blockbuster cases put affirmative action, which has been used for decades by colleges and universities to address inequality and diversify their campuses, in the spotlight. The Supreme Court had repeatedly ruled since 1978 schools may consider the race of applicants in pursuing educational benefits from a diverse student body, so long as they did not use a quota system.
Students for Fair Admissions, a conservative group, sued Harvard University and the University of North Carolina over their race-conscious admissions programs, alleging intentional discrimination toward Asian American applicants.The Supreme Court ruled in favor of the group in a decision that will have major ramifications for the college admissions process in the U.S.
“Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points,” Roberts wrote. “We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today.”
“At the same time, as all parties agree, nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise,” Roberts continued.
The court said that it has “permitted race-based admissions only within the confines of narrow restrictions. University programs must comply with strict scrutiny, they may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end.”
Justice Sotomayor, in her dissent, said the court’s decision “rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress.”
“It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits,” she wrote. “In so holding, the court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter.”
