Is Affirmative Action Dead?

The topic of discussion for this Constitution Monday is racial preferences for admission to college. On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court ruled on a vote of 6-3 that the 14^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution does not permit “affirmative action” and other race-preferential systems of discrimination for admission to college. Chief Justice John Roberts shared his opinion that white and Asian students were directly discriminated against under affirmative action.

The Biden administration does not agree. According to Tony Kinnett, the Biden administration claims that the court’s ruling “limited a vital tool that many institutions of higher education and post-secondary institutions have used for decades to help create vibrant, diverse campus communities.” 

Kinnett also reported that President Joe Biden claimed that no students were discriminated against by affirmative action. “Many people wrongly believe that affirmative action allows unqualified students – unqualified students – to be admitted ahead of qualified students. This is not – this is not how college admissions work.” Kinnett calls Biden’s statement “objectively false” and explained why.

Several class-action lawsuits reveal that universities like Harvard University and the University of North Carolina (the two defendants in the Supreme Court case) accepted “black and brown” students with lower standardized test scores while limiting the number of Asian students who could enter, regardless of the Asian students’ test scores.

Affirmative action allowed university admissions offices to limit students with higher test scores in the name of “racial equity and diversity” by suggesting that a student’s skin color had more value than merit did.

GianCarlo Canaparo, a senior legal fellow in the Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies at The Heritage Foundation, outlined the chances of students’ admission based on color if they applied to Harvard University before the court’s ruling…:

At Harvard, an Asian applicant with academics in the top 10% has a 12.7% chance of getting in. But with the same grades and test scores, a black student has a 56.1% chance. In fact, race is determinative for at least 45% of black and Hispanic applicants to Harvard.

The Biden administration is attempting to work around this court ruling just he is also working to find a way for student loans to be paid by taxpayers. Biden does not care who is treated unfairly because he is just interested in getting votes.