Harvard urges Supreme Court to back 40 years of race in admissions

Bloomberg

May 18: Harvard urged the Supreme Court to reject an effort to bar colleges from using race as a factor in admissions, saying the appeal seeks to upend four decades of legal precedent.

“Having failed to make the case that Harvard’s admissions practices contravene the court’s precedents governing the use of race in admissions, SFFA asks the court to overthrow them,” Harvard College said in a brief it filed Monday, referring to Students for Fair Admissions, the group seeking the high court’s review. “But SFFA offers no legitimate justification for such an extraordinary step.”

SFFA’s request comes as the court is likely to be more skeptical of race-conscious admissions than it was in 2003, when it ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger that universities could use race as one factor among many to diversify their student bodies. Chief Justice John Roberts has criticized what he sees as special protections for racial minorities, writing in a 2006 redistricting case, “It is a sordid business, this divvying up by race.”

SFFA, led by the longtime conservative activist and affirmative action foe Edward Blum, sued Harvard in 2014, alleging that it violates federal civil rights laws by intentionally discriminating against Asian-Americans in undergraduate admissions, favoring Black and Hispanic students. A federal judge in Boston ruled for Harvard in 2019, finding there was no evidence that the Ivy League school discriminates on the basis of race or engages in racial balancing or quotas.

An appeals court upheld the decision, and in February SFFA asked the Supreme Court to review the case and to overturn the 2003 Grutter ruling.

In its answer Monday, Harvard said its admissions policies are consistent with decades of Supreme Court precedent that permits the use of race as one factor. It argues the evidence showed it doesn’t automatically award race-based “tips” but rather considers race “in a flexible and nonmechanical way” that benefits “only highly qualified candidates.”

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-05-17/harvard-urges-high-court-to-back-40-years-of-race-in-admissions