The U.S. Supreme Court's ruling to strike down longstanding affirmative-action policies means universities and colleges across the country, including in Colorado, will have to stop using race or ethnicity as part of any considerations for admission.
The conservative-majority court sided with Students for Fair Admissions in two separate cases against Harvard University, a private institution, in a 6-2 vote, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, a public university, 6-3. The plaintiffs who brought the case argued that the institutions' practices discriminated against white and Asian American students, but proponents of such policies have pointed to their use to increase diversity and reduce historic racial disparities for Black, Latinos and Native Americans in higher education, which continue to this day.
While not all Colorado colleges and universities use race-conscious admissions and the policies mostly significantly affect admissions to universities and colleges that are highly selective, some of the state's higher education institutions do factor in race and ethnicity as part of their processes. Now, they will have to find alternatives to ensure more diversity in their student populations, many of which have proven difficult in other states that have banned affirmative action policies.
"Affirmative action (programs) have always acted at the margins, trying to avoid the worst of racial isolation," said Kevin Welner, a professor at the University of Colorado Boulder who specializes in educational policy and law. Welner also leads the university's National Education Policy Center.
The ruling did not come as a surprise due to the court's makeup, but it still disappointed college administrators and Colorado leaders who noted that it doesn't just affect people's attendance at universities but also their future opportunities and those of their peers who won't learn from or work with people of diverse perspectives.
Colorado's attorney general, along with other states, filed an amicus brief last year to the Supreme Court supporting race-conscious admissions.
"For over 45 years, affirmative action policies have helped to correct for past discrimination, to provide more opportunities to historically underrepresented communities, and to ensure that students can learn in diverse and inclusive environments. … This Court's misguided conclusion, claiming that these longstanding policies violate the Constitution, threatens to undermine the progress we have made on college campuses to create access for all Americans and ensure a diverse learning environment for all," Attorney General Phil Weiser said in a statement.
Competitive universities across the country with race-conscious policies are not "diverse," Welner noted, but these programs are an attempt to avoid the worst of what would happen without them.
And unlike with previous Supreme Courts, this court is not refusing to take on cases with already established law as displayed most notably in overturning Roe v. Wade, but instead has reconsidered cases on issues the majority justices don't like, Welner said, thereby bringing politics into the equation.
Welner described CU Boulder as a "moderately selective institution," a public university that could be minimally impacted by the decision in the UNC case — the university's acceptance rate in 2021 was 79.6%.
"CU Boulder uses a holistic approach to admissions that takes into account a variety of primary academic factors and secondary factors as they relate to students' ability to be successful in our competitive academic environment," according to a statement from the university. "This includes the review of personal essays and letters of recommendation."
Employees reviewing applications can also see racial demographics and can use it as one of the factors of the university's "holistic review process" for admissions, but a prospective student's race doesn't determine whether they will be admitted, the statement added.
In Colorado, private schools would be impacted by the Harvard case, such as Colorado College — which had a 14.3% acceptance rate in 2021 — and even the University of Denver — which had a 63.6% acceptance rate — preventing them from using race as a factor in the process.
Colorado College's Vice President for Enrollment Mark Hatch said the college uses race as one of many qualitative and quantitative factors in the admissions process, and there's strong evidence that this dates back to the early 1970s when the college wrote about trying to diversify its student body in a variety of ways.
"We do a deep dive in every file … and read every word," Hatch said.
About 26% of Colorado College's student body of 2,200 students identifies as a person of color with an additional 6% international students. The university also considers the diversity of geography and socioeconomic status, Hatch noted.
With the ruling, "it's going to be more difficult to achieve the racial diversity that we have obtained the last few years, but we also know that Colorado College is known for its commitment to access and affordability and certainly hope we're going to see large numbers of students from all backgrounds that will continue to apply," he said.
The court cases against the use of race-conscious admissions programs have been viewed as "linked backlash to two attempts towards racial justice," Dominique Baker, an education policy professor at Southern Methodist University, told the Associated Press.
Baker was among the authors of a 2019 report that found states were more likely to ban affirmative action policies when the number of white students enrolled at public flagship universities decreased.
"These are policy tools that have an explicit aim around reducing the power of white supremacy," she told the AP.
The Supreme Court's decision goes against previous rulings on the use of race-conscious admissions, most recently in 2016. In a dissent released Thursday, Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the first Latina to serve on the nation's highest court, wrote that the ruling "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress." Justice Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, the first Black female justice, wrote in another dissent that the decision was "truly a tragedy for us all."
But Chief Justice John Roberts for the majority opinion said higher education institutions "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. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice."
This is a developing story and will be updated.
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