Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson blasted the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action Thursday, warning that its decision “makes things worse, not better” for race relations.
“The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism,” Jackson wrote in a dissenting opinion. “But if that is its motivation, the majority proceeds in vain. If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us.”
The court invalidated Harvard’s and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) admissions policies by ruling they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.
Chief Justice Roberts wrote the majority opinion, saying that both Harvard and UNC “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.”
The ruling delivered a blow to supporters of affirmative action, which the Supreme Court laid the groundwork for in 1978 when it decided a challenge to the University of California’s system that reserved 16 out of 100 seats for members of certain minority groups.
Jackson previously served on Harvard’s Board of Overseers until last spring and agreed to recuse herself from the school’s case during her confirmation hearing. She also argued that “ignoring race just makes it matter more,” noting that taking away the consideration of race in college admissions will not translate to life experiences.
“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” Jackson wrote. “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.”