Directions: Read the article and construct a response to the prompt below.

Background: Affirmative action policies use race as a factor when making hiring or college admission decisions. They have been used in order to diversify the workplace and higher education campuses and provide more opportunity to historically marginalized groups. These policies have been challenged in the courts by those who consider racial preference in decisions a violation of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause. The Supreme Court has heard several affirmative action cases regarding college admissions. The most recent is from 2023, Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College

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Article: Supreme Court Guts Affirmative Action, Effectively Ending Race-conscious AdmissionsLinks to an external site., NPR.org, June 29, 2023 by Nina Totenberg

In a historic decision, the U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday effectively ended race-conscious admission programs at colleges and universities across the country. In a decision divided along ideological lines, the six-justice conservative supermajority invalidated admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

The decision reverses decades of precedent upheld over the years by narrow Supreme Court majorities that included Republican-appointed justices. It ends the ability of colleges and universities public and private to do what most say they still need to do: consider race as one of many factors in deciding which of the qualified applicants is to be admitted.

Chief Justice John Roberts, a longtime critic of affirmative action programs, wrote the decision for the court majority, saying that the nation's colleges and universities must use colorblind criteria in admissions.

Majority opinion

"Many universities have for too long...concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin," he wrote. "Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."

Justice Clarence Thomas...wrote, "sees the universities' admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences. ... Those policies fly in the face of our colorblind Constitution."

...Thomas, the second black justice appointed to the court, reiterated his long-held view that affirmative action imposes a stigma on minorities. "While I am painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination, I hold our enduring hope that this country will live up to its principles that ... all men are created equal, are equal citizens, and must be treated equally before the law."

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Opposing view

That sentiment echoed Justice Sonia Sotomayor's dissent.

"The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society," she wrote.

Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's first Black female justice, also chimed in, saying: "With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces 'colorblindness for all' by legal fiat. But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.

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Directions: Respond to the following prompt in a well-developed paragraph.

Prompt:

• Identify both sides of the argument presented in the article above
• Evaluate which argument is more compelling
• Include details and examples to support your answer