Students for Fair Admissions wants the Supreme Court to eliminate race as a factor in university admissions. Affirmative-action supporters say such a move would decrease racial diversity on college campuses.
The Supreme Court of the United States on Thursday, Oct. 6, 2022 in Washington, DC.Students for Fair Admissions wants the Supreme Court to eliminate race as a factor in university admissions.The Supreme Court will hear the two high-profile challenges on Monday.
"I represent so many communities in which affirmative action benefits us all the time," Agustín León-Sáenz, a first-generation immigrant from Ecuador and a sophomore at Harvard, told Insider."Seeing the possibility of having it taken away would be so absolutely devastating." Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit led by conservative activist Edward Blum and the plaintiff in both cases, alleges the opposite: universities are unlawfully giving"racial preferences" to underrepresented minorities, including Black, Hispanic and Native American applicants, at the expense of other groups.
SFFA claims that universities like Harvard and UNC have over-emphasized race in their admissions policies, violating Title VI the 1964 Civil Rights Act, which prohibits private institutions that receive federal funding from discriminating on the basis of race, and the Constitution's equal protection clause.