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The U.S. Supreme Court struck down race-based affirmative action in college admissions on Thursday, overturning nearly half a century of legal precedent in a decision that will likely have devastating impacts on racial equity in higher education. The majority of justices ruled in two closely related cases regarding Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that considering race in their admissions process was a violation of the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause, an amendment originally established to give rights to formerly enslaved people.6 to 3 on the UNC case and 6 to 2 in the Harvard case, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recusing in the latter.
The impacts of this decision will reverberate for decades to come and will majorly disadvantage non-white people — especially those who are Black, Latinx or Indigenous — in the college admissions process. In her dissent, Jackson wrote that the decision is a “tragedy for us all.”