The impact of the Supreme Court’s decision in Students for Fair Admissions, SFFA v. Harvard College and SFFA v. University of North Carolina, will stretch far beyond the freshman lecture hall.
While the 6-3 decision will certainly have a negative impact on undergraduate campuses, the Supreme Court decision to strike down race-conscious admissions practices in most colleges and universities will be felt in all aspects of industry and civil leadership. It will also have a serious negative impact on the legal profession. In a blistering dissent, Justice Sonia Sotomayor said, “the devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated.”
As widely predicted, the ruling reversed 40 years of legal precedent that protected race-conscious admissions in higher education. Earlier decisions allowed schools to use race as one of many factors that college admissions officers could consider when conducting a holistic review of applicants. But last Thursday’s decision found that affirmative action in higher education violates the Constitution. The majority ruled that the admissions policies at Harvard and UNC violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Rather than protecting programs that advance equity in education and opportunities, the increasingly polarized Supreme Court has now banned them.
Olympia Duhart
The decision will harm diversity at the undergraduate level; in turn, it will also harm diversity of law school classes and other professional programs. By decreasing the number of Black and Brown students admitted to graduate schools across the country, the SFFA decision strips students of educational opportunities and blocks their path to professions and civil posts.
It will certainly shrink an already narrow pipeline for law school. The ruling undermines the progress that we have made toward an inclusive legal profession that reflects the nation’s diversity. And even that progress has been slow and stunted. The legal profession is already grappling with diversity.
While a 2022 survey by the American Bar Association found a growing number of women, Asian-American, Hispanics and mixed-race people in the legal profession, the number of Black lawyers remained stagnant. Even among groups experiencing growth, the numbers fall short of the US population demographics. Women are still underrepresented. Asians make up 5.5% of all lawyers. Black attorneys are underrepresented -- making up only 4.5% of practicing attorneys. Hispanics represented only 5.8% of all lawyers. Native Americans represented the smallest racial or ethnic group among lawyers; less than one percent of lawyers in the United States are Native American. In several important ways, the demographics of the legal profession fail to reflect the demographics of the population.
