The Supreme Court is seen on Thursday, June 29, in Washington, DC. Stephanie Scarbrough/AP
Joan Biskupic had a firsthand view of the reading of the Supreme Court’s decision on affirmative action Thursday.
“The justices spoke so long that they had to take breaks to drink water,” she said.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina justice on the court, “talked about the profound mistake that the majority was making here. She said it would close the doors of opportunity to people across the nation — for schools, for business, for the military; it would have such reverberations,” according to Biskupic.
“At the very end, she said, ‘We shall overcome.’ And it was a mournful robust dissent,” Biskupic said. “… The weight of history was so evident in the room.”
- The Supreme Court says colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration as a specific basis in admissions, a landmark decision that overturns long-standing precedent that has benefited Black and Latino students in higher education.
- The majority conservative opinion claims the court was not expressly overturning prior cases authorizing race-based affirmative action, and suggested that how race has affected an applicant’s life can still be part of how their application is considered.
- Three Democratic-appointed justices stressed in the dissent that even if the court did not formally end race-based affirmative action in higher education, its analysis will make it practically impossible for colleges and universities to take race into account.
- There are several other major opinions left in this term, including on President Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness program and LGBTQ rights.
