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The Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard are unconstitutional. In a pair of decisions, the Court found that the schools' race-based admission policies violated the Equal Protection clause of the Constitution.
The vote was 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case because Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself because she graduated from Harvard Law School and previously sat on Harvard's Board of Overseers. Her daughter also attends the university.
The decision was penned by Chief Justice John Roberts, who wrote that the programs at both schools "lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful endpoints."
The ruling effectively overturned the 2003 ruling Grutter v. Bollinger, which upheld affirmative action on the basis that schools had a compelling interest in creating diverse campuses.
Justice Sonia Sotomayor blasted the decision in her dissent, calling it "indefensible."
"The result of today's decision is that a person's skin color may play a role in assessing individualized suspicion, but it cannot play a role in assessing that person's individualized contributions to a diverse learning environment. That indefensible reading of the Constitution is not grounded in law and subverts the Fourteenth Amendment's guarantee of equal protection," Sotomayor wrote.
After the ruling, President Joe Biden unveiled a series of executive orders to boost diversity on college campuses.
"We cannot let this decision be the last word," Biden said.
"America is an idea, an idea, unique in the world, an idea of hope and opportunity, of possibilities, of giving everyone a fair shot, of leaving no one behind. We've never fully lived up to it, but we have never walked away from it, either," he added. "We will not walk away from it now."
He also had harsh words when asked by CNN reporter Arlette Saenz if he thought the Supreme Court had gone "rogue."
"This is not a normal court," Biden replied as he walked out of the room.