Good morning. We're covering the Supreme Court's affirmative action ruling, heat in the South and a fast-fashion blunder. |
 | | Demonstrators near the Supreme Court yesterday.Kenny Holston/The New York Times |
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The current Supreme Court has been out of step with public opinion in some of its highest-profile rulings, including on abortion and environmental protection. Yesterday's ruling restricting race-based affirmative action at colleges and universities was different. |
In a 6-3 decision, the court's six conservative justices declared that colleges' use of race as a factor in student admissions is unconstitutional. They cited the Fourteenth Amendment, which prohibits discrimination based on race. |
Their ruling appears to align with public opinion. Most Americans oppose the consideration of race or ethnicity in college admissions, surveys have found. Even in liberal California, the public has voted twice to prohibit affirmative action. (Americans' opinions can shift somewhat depending on how the survey question is framed.) |
The public's views could make it difficult for Democrats to rally Americans in support of affirmative action as they have with abortion rights since the court overturned Roe v. Wade last year. Still, Democrats quickly condemned the affirmative action ruling. "We cannot let this decision be the last word," President Biden said yesterday. |
Whatever the political outcome, the decision upended decades of law and the higher education landscape. The ruling will shift the makeup of many of America's top universities — and the prospects of students who want to attend them. |
 | | The University of North CarolinaKate Medley for The New York Times |
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The decision addressed cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Both schools say they consider race in admissions to diversify their student bodies, particularly by boosting Black and Latino applicants who may be disadvantaged by racism. But critics say that Black and Latino students are helped to the detriment of students of races or ethnicities that are already more represented on campuses, particularly Asian Americans. |
Writing the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts sided with the policy's critics. He stated that affirmative action is racially discriminatory and unconstitutional. "Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it," he wrote. |
The ruling did not prohibit all mentions of race in college applications. Prospective students can, for example, write in application essays about how race has affected their lives. But Roberts warned that schools still can't use race in determining admissions even when considering those essays. Instead, mentions of race can only demonstrate an applicant's personal accomplishments or virtues. |
"A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student's courage and determination," Roberts wrote. "In other words, the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race." |
The court's three liberals dissented. Justice Sonia Sotomayor summarized her dissent from the bench, a rare move that signals deep disagreement. "Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress," she wrote. |
She added that the ruling "cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter." |
Whether a justice views affirmative action as positive or negative appears to hinge on whether he or she primarily sees it as holding down or pulling up prospective students. The majority and concurring opinions focused on affirmative action's downsides for white and Asian students, while the dissents focused on the benefits to Black and Latino students. The disagreement comes down to which effect someone believes matters more. |
Some states have already banned race-based affirmative action, offering real-world examples of what could happen. Many schools saw drops in Black and Latino student attendance, my colleague Stephanie Saul, who covers education, wrote. The same could happen at Harvard, North Carolina and other universities. |
But one large university system, the University of California, adopted policies that helped increase the number of Black and Hispanic students after the state ended affirmative action. California's experience indicates that schools can, if they're willing, take steps that improve diversity even without explicitly considering race. |
For most college students, the ruling will have limited direct impact. Few colleges outside of elite institutions have affirmative action policies; they accept a majority of applications. |
But the overall makeup of the higher education landscape understates the effects of the ruling. Elite colleges have a disproportionate impact on American society. Consider that eight of the nine justices who voted on yesterday's ruling went to Ivy League schools. And two, Sotomayor and Clarence Thomas, have said that they benefited from affirmative action. Now, they help decide the law of the land. |
 | | Cooling off in the Chattahoochee River in Columbus, Ga., yesterday.Cheney Orr for The New York Times |
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A fast-fashion blunder: The online retailer Shein, which sells trendy clothes at bargain-bin prices, has struggled to win over shoppers who question its labor practices. So the company invited influencers to tour its facilities in China. When their posts showed tidy stacks of packages and rows of happy workers, the backlash was swift. |
While Shein's marketing stunt failed, it shielded the executives who should be the focus of the public's scorn, Amy Odell writes on Substack. "This is where influencers have been usefully employed: as the faces of faceless corporations." |
 | | Christopher Simpson for The New York Times. Food Stylist: Simon Andrews. |
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Thanks for spending part of your morning with The Times. See you tomorrow. — German |
P.S. On this day in 1859, the French acrobat Charles Blondin tightrope-walked across the Niagara Gorge, 160 feet above water. |
 | Editor: David Leonhardt Deputy Editor: Amy Fiscus News Editor: Tom Wright-Piersanti News Staff: Lyna Bentahar, Lauren Jackson, Sean Kawasaki-Culligan, Brent Lewis, German Lopez, Claire Moses, Ian Prasad Philbrick, Ashley Wu News Assistant: Lauren Hard Saturday Writer: Melissa Kirsch |
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