57. The Day the Rules Changed

From Fisher to Students for Fair Admissions

Photo by Clay Banks on Unsplash

On a warm June morning in 2023, college-bound seniors were scrolling through their phones when the push notifications started lighting up:

“Supreme Court ends affirmative action in college admissions.”

For some, it was validation, proof that admissions would now be “fair.” For others, it felt like a door slamming shut, a sudden shift in the ground they’d been walking on their entire lives.

It wasn’t always this way. Just seven years earlier, in Fisher v. University of Texas (2016), Justice Anthony Kennedy had written an opinion upholding a limited use of race in admissions. It was careful, qualified, even reluctant, but it still allowed schools to consider race as one factor among many. The message was clear: diversity mattered, but schools had to prove it mattered enough, and they had to use race sparingly.

The Writing on the Wall

That careful approval turned out to be temporary. The Court had changed in both its membership and its philosophy. By the time Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) reached the Court, the question wasn’t whether Harvard and UNC’s programs were too broad or too deferential. The question was whether race-conscious admissions were constitutional at all.

Harvard and UNC defended their policies the same way schools had for decades: they didn’t award points for race, didn’t use quotas, and treated race as one factor in a holistic review. Admissions officers could consider how a student’s racial background shaped their perspective or experiences.

But SFFA told a different story, one focused on Asian American applicants. The group argued Harvard’s policies penalized them. UNC was accused of similar practices. What had once been a debate about fairness to white applicants had shifted into a claim about discrimination against another minority group.

The Court’s Ruling

Chief Justice John Roberts’s majority opinion was sweeping. He said these programs failed strict scrutiny.

• No Compelling Government Interest

  • The goal was too vague: “educational benefits of diversity” lacked clear metrics or an endpoint.

• Not Narrowly Tailored

  • The process stereotyped: considering race, even as one factor, risked treating people as representatives of racial groups instead of as individuals.

  • There was no sunset: two decades after Grutter, there was no plan to phase out race-conscious admissions.

Then came the signature line:

“Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it.”

The Constitution, he argued, protects individuals, not groups, so even well-intentioned racial classifications are impermissible.

With that, the Court effectively closed the constitutional door on race-conscious admissions.

The Voices in Dissent

Justice Sonia Sotomayor accused the majority of ignoring reality:

“The Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness... that closes the door of opportunity.”

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson went further, writing about two students in North Carolina with identical test scores—one from a wealthy, white suburb, one from a Black family who had faced generations of economic exclusion. Treating them as if they started from the same place, she said, was not equality but blindness to inequality itself.

What It Means Going Forward

The decision ended more than just Harvard’s and UNC’s programs. It ended a 45-year experiment that began in 1978 with Bakke, which allowed race-conscious admissions for the sake of diversity. From then until SFFA, the Court had balanced two visions of fairness: treating individuals equally versus addressing inequality rooted in history.

Now, that balance is gone. Universities are rewriting admissions policies, leaning heavily on essays about adversity or personal background, and recruiting more aggressively in underrepresented communities. But the legal landscape is transformed: any policy explicitly using race—even for inclusion—is under deep suspicion.

For students, the change is not abstract. It’s the difference between seeing their identity as part of what they bring to the table, and being told it cannot be considered at all.

Closing Reflection: What This Series Has Shown

Over these posts, we’ve traced affirmative action’s constitutional journey, from Bakke’s fractured compromise, to Grutter’s embrace of diversity as an educational good, to Fisher’s tightening scrutiny, and now to SFFA’s sweeping rejection of race-conscious admissions.

What emerges is a story about shifting visions of equality:

• One that sees fairness as treating everyone the same, regardless of history or circumstance.

• Another that sees fairness as sometimes requiring race-conscious action to correct systemic disadvantage.

These posts weren’t just about doctrine; they were about values: what we believe education is for, who it should serve, and how law mediates between competing ideas of justice.

That conversation isn’t over. Universities are already experimenting with new ways to build diverse classes. Lawmakers, students, and courts will continue to debate whether those efforts go too far—or not far enough.

Affirmative action as we knew it may be gone, but the deeper questions about opportunity, merit, and equality are very much alive.

---