Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson said Wednesday that if confirmed, she would recuse herself from a Supreme Court case that would involve Harvard’s admissions policies and their use of affirmative action.
Jackson, who received her bachelor’s degree and law degree from Harvard, will serve on the university’s board of trustees until her term expires this spring. Her law school classmate, Senator Ted Cruz, who graduated from Harvard a year ahead of her, asked her if she would step back from a case due to go to the Supreme Court in the fall.
“That’s my plan, Senator,” Jackson replied.
The Supreme Court may end race-based college admissions after agreeing to hear a pair of lawsuits in January alleging affirmative action is unfair to white and Asian-American students.
The High Court said it will hear claims that Harvard University, a private institution, and the University of North Carolina, a public school, discriminate against Asian applicants.
The lawsuits allege affirmative action favors African Americans, Hispanics, and Native Americans over Asian students.
Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, who received her bachelor’s degree and law degree from Harvard, will serve on the university’s Board of Supervisors until her term expires this spring.
Her law school classmate, Senator Ted Cruz, who got her degree a year ahead of her at Harvard, asked Jackson if she would back off on a case due to go to the Supreme Court in the fall.
His decision to consider the case was lauded by congressional Republicans but criticized by others who say reversing affirmative action removes a barrier against inequality.
White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki declined to comment on specific cases when asked at her daily press briefing on Monday, but said: “We strongly believe, this administration, in the benefits of diversity in higher education, and we take the benefits of diversity in higher education very seriously.” our obligation. to the promotion of justice and equal opportunity for the historically underserved segments of the population”.
Lower courts have previously dismissed objections to admissions practices, citing more than 40 years of Supreme Court rulings that allow colleges and universities to consider race in admissions decisions. But colleges and universities should do it in a highly specialized way to encourage diversity.
The matter was last heard by the court in 2016, when the judges ruled in favor of the University of Texas and its admissions program in a 4–3 decision. The case was brought by a white woman.
But the court has since undergone a massive reshuffle with Donald Trump appointing three conservative judges.
Two members of the 2016 four-judge majority majority have retired from the court: Judge Ruth Bader Ginsburg died in 2020, and Judge Anthony Kennedy retired in 2018.
The three dissenters in the case, Chief Justice John Roberts and Judges Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito, remain in court.
Roberts, who was known to sometimes side with liberal judges as a moderating influence on the court, was also critical of the use of race as a major factor in government programs.
Harvard, whose freshman class is about a quarter Asian American, 16 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic, denies discriminatory admissions practices
A federal judge ruled in October that the University of North Carolina did not discriminate against white and Asian American applicants by using its “holistic approach” to admissions based on race.
“It’s a dirty business to divide us into races,” he once wrote.
Both lawsuits were filed by Students for Fair Enrollment in Virginia, run by Edward Blum. He worked for many years to rid college applicants of racial considerations, and the new composition of the court breathed new life into his project.
The group is calling on the court to reverse the 2003 Grütter v. Bollinger ruling that upheld the University of Michigan law school admissions program.
The Biden administration urged judges to stay away from the issue, writing in the Harvard case that the challenges “cannot justify this extraordinary step” to overturn the 2003 decision.
Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said the Ivy League institution did not discriminate and vowed to continue to champion his admissions plan.
“Considering race as one of many factors in admission decisions results in a more diverse student body, which strengthens the learning environment for all,” Bacow said in a statement.
Bloom expressed his hope that the Supreme Court would drop the consideration of race in college admissions.
“Harvard and the University of North Carolina have changed their racially motivated freshman classes to meet established racial quotas,” Blume said in a statement.
The Supreme Court has reviewed college admissions several times in over 40 years. The current controversy dates back to his first major affirmative action case in 1978, when Judge Lewis Powell laid out the rationale for the need to account for race, even though the court prohibited the use of racial quotas in admissions.
Anti-admission protesters at Harvard University hold placards and American flags during a protest at Copley Square in Boston, Massachusetts, USA on Sunday, October 14, 2018.
In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, Powell approvingly called Harvard “a prime example” of a college that “records race in achieving the educational diversity valued by the First Amendment.”
Twenty-five years later, Judge Sandra Day O’Connor also, in her opinion, invoked Harvard’s plan in the Michigan Law School case.
In 2020, a federal appeals court in Boston ruled that Harvard has limited consideration of racial issues in line with Supreme Court precedents.
Harvard freshmen are about a quarter Asian American, 16 percent black and 13 percent Hispanic, the Harvard website says.
“If Harvard refuses admission based on race, the representation of African Americans and Hispanics will be reduced by almost half,” the school told the court, urging not to interfere in the case.
The Trump administration supported the Bloom v. Harvard case and filed its own discrimination lawsuit against Asian Americans and white people at Yale. The Biden administration dropped the Yale lawsuit.
In October, North Carolina’s flagship state university won a case in federal district court. U.S. District Judge Loretta Biggs ruled that the school’s program was designed to create a diverse student body and demonstrated the benefits of doing so.
Biggs stated in her decision that UNC does not discriminate against white and Asian American students in its “holistic” admissions process.
Ignoring race as a factor, according to Biggs, “misses an important context, including obscuring the racial barriers and obstacles that have been faced, overcome, and yet to be overcome.”
The court accepted the North Carolina case for consideration, although it has not yet been heard by a federal appeals court. Bloom filed an appeal with the Supreme Court in the hope that it would be merged with the Harvard case so that judges could rule on public and private colleges at the same time.