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Supreme Court Will Hear Potentially Far-Reaching Affirmative Action Cases

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On Monday, the Supreme Court announced it will hear two separate challenges to the use of Affirmative Action in college admissions – including in the Ivy Leagues.

This case may have a profound impact on policies based on race.

Interesting fact is the different schools involved in each case. Harvard is one of the issues, while the University of North Carolina (a state school) is another.

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The nature of the complaints

These issues are primarily related to the discriminatory admissions policies of UNC and Harvard for prospective Asian-American students.

The lawsuits also argue that the admissions policies of both schools amount to “racial balancing” and thus discriminate against Asian-Americans, who may have higher scores and yet be rejected.

Lower courts have in the past sided with both Harvard and UNC, saying that race is only one of many factors in the admissions process and “is a necessary part of fostering student-body diversity.”

Each school has denied that they were discriminated against in admissions.

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Nothing New

Discrimination – intended or not – of Asian-American students is not new and has been studied for a while. For years, the Asian American Coalition for Education (AACFE) has been following such studies.

As far back as 2007, author Daniel Golden in his book, “The Prices of Admission: How America’s Ruling Class Buys Its Way Into Elite Colleges- and Who Gets Left Outside,” described a “triple standard” at Harvard, where the highest standards were for Asian-Americans.

A 2009 study showed that Asian American students scored 140 points more than whites and 270 points better than Hispanics. They also scored 450 points higher as black students, but they still received the lowest acceptance rates of all SAT scores brackets.

In 2014, Richard Sander in his book, “Mismatch: How Affirmative Action Hurts Students It’s Intended To Help and Why Universities Won’t Admit It,” said that at Harvard, Yale, and Cornell, “No other racial or ethnic group is as underrepresented relative to its application numbers as are Asian- Americans.” 

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Defense of affirmative Action

To uphold affirmative actions policies, the Biden administration encouraged last month’s Supreme Court rejection of the Harvard admissions policy challenge.

The administration argued that Students For Fair Admissions had not proven what it called “special justifications” to overturn any affirmative action policies, stating that race-based admissions policies, “correctly recognize that securing the educational benefits that flow from such diversity is a sufficiently compelling interest to justify race-conscious measures.”