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Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College
Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College was filed in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on November 17, 2014. The complaint was filed by the nonprofit membership group Students for Fair Admissions with financing from the Project on Fair Representation, a legal defense fund focused on ending racial and ethnic classifications and preferences by governments. The group has claimed that Harvard's policy of considering race in admissions violated anti-discrimination law and that the institution has been excluding high-achieving Asian-Americans in a quota-like fashion.[1][2][3]
In October 2019, a judge ruled that Harvard College's admissions policies did not unduly discriminate against Asian Americans and that no quotas were in place. In February 2020, Students for Fair Admissions filed an appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. The court of appeals ruled in favor of Harvard later that year, concluding that Judge Burroughs made no errors in her ruling or factual findings. Students for Fair Admissions then petitioned the Supreme Court to review the First Circuit's decisions in the Harvard case and a similar case called Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina. The Supreme Court heard both cases in their 2022–2023 term.[4][5]
On June 29, 2023, the Supreme Court reversed the lower court's decision and ruled in favor of Students for Fair Admissions, Inc., in a 6-3 decision. The ruling effectively ended race-based considerations in college admission, but explicitly allowed national service academies to continue considering race as a factor in admissions for reasons of national security.[6][7]
Case details
| Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College | |
 | |
| Court: | U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts |
| Text: | Text of complaint, Docket activity |
| Case history | |
| Filed: | November 17, 2014 |
| Trial court: | U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts |
In April 2014, former investment broker Edward Blum and his Project on Fair Representation launched Harvard Not Fair, a website intended to draw students who felt they had been rejected from Harvard because of their race. The website, along with two others for the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and the University of Wisconsin at Madison, was launched in the wake of the Supreme Court decision in Fisher v. University of Texas, which placed a heavier burden on universities that use racial preferences to prove that the preferences are individualized and necessary. The website asked students who were denied admission to submit their information and join Students for Fair Admissions, a membership organization also started by Blum and dedicated to ending racial classifications and preferences. On November 17, 2014, Students for Fair Admissions filed a complaint in the United States District Court for the District of Massachusetts on behalf of an anonymous high-achieving Asian-American student who was denied admission to Harvard.[8][9][10]
The complaint accused Harvard College of violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 by considering race in admissions, which the plaintiff claimed amounted to intentional racial and ethnic discrimination against the members of Students for Fair Admissions. In previous cases, the United States Supreme Court has consistently viewed Harvard's admissions plan "as a model of constitutionality or as a model of individualized consideration or holistic review." The complaint stated that contrary to the high court's belief that Harvard considered race on a highly individualized and narrowly applied basis, the school has been labeling the race of every applicant and discriminating against "disfavored classes of applicants," likening the current policy to a time when the college once limited the number of Jewish students it accepted.[9][11][12]
The complaint went on to claim that Harvard has held Asian-Americans to a higher admissions standard than students of other races and that the college has been engaging in racial balancing by using race as a dominant factor of each application. The group has sought from the courts an "outright prohibition of racial preferences in university admissions," citing the ability of other elite universities to maintain diversity using race-neutral alternatives such as financial aid, scholarships and the elimination of legacy preferences.[9][11][12]
Harvard has rejected the claims, saying that it looks at factors that comprise the whole student "through an individualized, holistic review having the goal of creating a vibrant academic community." In its statement, Harvard held that the plaintiff "was not entitled to any form of compensation nor a trial by jury."[12][13]
Lower courts
In May 2015, the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College case moved into the discovery period. Judge Allison Dale Burroughs gave the Students for Fair Admissions 10 to 12 months to collect evidence of the claims made in its complaint during the discovery period. The group requested "personal essays, comments from alumni interviewers, and summary sheets containing comments from admissions officers" with student names left in tact, rather than redacted. Lawyers representing the group planned to analyze the names to determine whether those of Asian origin affected admissions decisions.[3]
In October 2019, Judge Burroughs ruled that Harvard College's admissions policies do not unduly discriminate against Asian Americans. Burroughs stated that no quotas were in place at Harvard and also acknowledged that the school attempted to reach the same level of racial diversity each year by using “the racial makeup of admitted students to help determine how many students it should admit overall."[4]
In February 2020, the Students for Fair Admissions filed an appeal in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. This court ruled in favor of Harvard College later that year, concluding that Judge Burroughs made no errors in her ruling or factual findings. The U.S. Justice Department filed amicus briefs in both the initial hearing and the appeal, arguing that Harvard imposed "a racial penalty by systematically disfavoring Asian American applicants."[14][15]
The Supreme Court
The Students for Fair Admissions petitioned the Supreme Court to review the First Circuit's decisions in both the Harvard College case and a similar case called Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina that focused on the impact of racial admissions policies on Caucasian and Asian American applicants at the University of North Carolina. (The University of North Carolina case was decided in the University’s favor in October 2021.) The petitions for both cases requested the Supreme Court to overturn its precedents from the Grutter v. Bollinger case, which was decided in 2003.[16]
Harvard filed an opposing petition requesting that the Supreme Court reject the Students for Fair Admissions petition. The Biden administration’s solicitor general wrote in support of Harvard’s position in December 2021 and also urged the Supreme Court to reject the Students for Fair Admissions petition.[17][18]
The Supreme Court accepted and consolidated the Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina cases on January 24, 2022, with the expectation of hearing the combined case in their 2022–2023 term.[19]
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson testified during her confirmation hearing that she would recuse herself from hearing the combined case because of her position on the Harvard Board of Overseers. The Supreme Court then separated the two cases again in order to allow Justice Jackson to participate in the University of North Carolina case.[20]
On June 29, 2023, the court the court ruled in favor of the plaintiffs in a 6-3 decision, significantly limiting the consideration of race in college admissions. In the majority opinion, Chief Justice Roberts wrote that, "... the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race. Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have 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."[21] In a dissenting opinion, Justice Sotomayor wrote that in ruling in favor of the plaintiffs, "the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter. 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."[21]
Recent news
The link below is to the most recent stories in a Google news search for the terms Affirmative action Harvard. These results are automatically generated from Google. Ballotpedia does not curate or endorse these articles.
See also
- Affirmative action in Massachusetts
- Affirmative action
- Fisher v. University of Texas
- Higher education in Massachusetts
External links
- Text of complaint
- Docket activity
- Students for Fair Admissions
- Project on Fair Representation
- Harvard Not Fair
Footnotes
- ↑ Project on Fair Representation, accessed May 26, 2015
- ↑ Students for Fair Admissions, "About," accessed May 26, 2015
- ↑ 3.0 3.1 The Harvard Crimson, "Admissions Lawsuit Plaintiff Requests Extensive Harvard Records for Discovery," May 4, 2015
- ↑ 4.0 4.1 The New York Times, “The Affirmative Action Battle at Harvard Is Not Over,” August 3, 2022
- ↑ Reuters, “Supreme Court Will Hear Challenge to Affirmative Action at Harvard and U.N.C.,” August 3, 2022
- ↑ AP News, "Divided Supreme Court outlaws affirmative action in college admissions, says race can’t be used," accessed June 29, 2023
- ↑ SCOTUSblog, "Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action programs in college admissions," accessed June 29, 2023
- ↑ The New York Times, "Unofficial Enforcer of Ruling on Race in College Admissions," April 7, 2015
- ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 NPR, "New Affirmative Action Cases Say Policies Hurt Asian-Americans," November 20, 2014
- ↑ Harvard University Not Fair, accessed May 26, 2015
- ↑ 11.0 11.1 Students for Fair Admissions, "Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. Harvard Complaint," accessed May 26, 2015
- ↑ 12.0 12.1 12.2 The Washington Post, "Harvard University targeted by affirmative action opponents. For them, it’s the big one.," November 19, 2015
- ↑ The Harvard Crimson, "In Legal Filing, Harvard Denies Allegations of Race-Based Discrimination," March 11, 2015
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namednyt - ↑ The Washington Post, “Justice Department argues Harvard’s use of race in admissions violates civil rights law," March 11, 2015
- ↑ The Harvard Crimson, “Students for Fair Admissions Petitions SCOTUS to Take Up Suit Against Harvard’s Race-Conscious Admissions,” August 3, 2022
- ↑ The Harvard Gazette, “Harvard argues admissions suit isn’t worthy of Supreme Court review,” August 3, 2022
- ↑ Reuters, “Biden administration asks U.S. Supreme Court to reject Harvard affirmative action case,” August 3, 2022
- ↑ Cite error: Invalid
<ref>tag; no text was provided for refs namednyt2 - ↑ SCOTUSblog, “Court will hear affirmative-action challenges separately, allowing Jackson to participate in UNC case,” August 3, 2022
- ↑ 21.0 21.1 Supreme Court of the United States, "Students for Fair Admission, Inc. v. President and Fellows of Harvard College," accessed June 29, 2023
