The U.S. Supreme Court ruled against affirmative action Thursday in a landmark case involving two highly-selective colleges, marking what could be the end of race-conscious admissions.

The decision stems from two lawsuits filed by the nonprofit Students for Fair Admissions against Harvard College and The University of North Carolina, which challenged the consideration of race in college admissions. The group claimed that both institutions had unlawfully discriminated against Asian American and white applicants by giving preference to other minority applicants — a charge that experts, civil rights groups and college officials contested.

In a split opinion, six conservative Justices ruled that both Harvard and UNC’s affirmative action programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points,” and had violated the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson sharply dissented, arguing that the decision ignored the realities of a segregated society, where “race has always mattered and continues to matter.”

“Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress,” Justice Sotomayor wrote in a dissenting opinion.

Spoiler: The SCOTUS decision won’t impact current college admissions practices in Alabama. But experts say it could have a chilling effect on campus diversity and retention efforts — especially in places where there are ongoing efforts to restrict diversity and equity programs on campus.

“This decision could have serious consequences for higher education, particularly in the South, where state laws and policies expressly barred Black students from most public colleges and universities less than a lifetime ago,” Raymond Pierce, president of the The Southern Education Foundation, wrote in a statement.

“The damaging impact of these policies continue to manifest themselves to this day,” he added. “The decision could lead to further drops in Black students’ college enrollment, when the nation needs many additional students of color to succeed in college. New state laws that restrict longstanding diversity, equity, and inclusion programs have already forced some institutions to modify their enrollment processes.”

What is affirmative action?

Affirmative action policies seek to right historical wrongs against groups that have been discriminated against. That may mean providing extra financial assistance to people with certain demographic backgrounds, or by considering their race, sex, religion or nationality in hiring or admissions processes.

Some colleges, for example, have long considered race and gender — in addition to many other factors – in their admissions decisions as a way to address the fact that African Americans, women and other groups historically did not have access to higher education.

They are not, however, allowed to impose quotas or discriminate against any particular group.

Supporters say that taking an applicant’s demographic background into account, rather than ignoring it, can lead to a more diverse and inclusive school environment that benefits everyone.

“Historically, communities of color have been held back from educational opportunities because of racial discrimination. Race-conscious affirmative action practices help address systemic barriers and create crucial pathways for Black and Brown people to access higher education,” Margaret Huang, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, said in a statement Thursday.

And alternatives to affirmative action, according to recent research, have done little to improve diversity. In recent court proceedings, a lower court found that removing race-conscious decisions at Harvard would have “significant costs,” such as diminishing Black student representation by nearly a third.

But few colleges actually use what are called “race-conscious” admissions practices. And over the years, courts and some states have clamped down on various aspects of those processes.

A brief history of affirmative action in the U.S., Alabama

Many affirmative action programs first started in the 1960s and 1970s, amid efforts to redress past discrimination and ensure equal access to jobs and education.

President John F. Kennedy first used the term in 1961 by instructing federal contractors to take “affirmative action to ensure that applicants are treated equally without regard to race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.”

Nearly two decades later, a 1978 Supreme Court case involving the University of California System banned the use of strict racial quotas in college admissions. A judge upheld that colleges may still consider race as a factor that would achieve “educational benefits,” but not to remedy past discrimination.

Race-conscious admissions practices are now banned in nine states: Arizona, California Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington.

Alabama currently has no state laws regarding affirmative action in employment or education.

In the late 1990s, however, a court case involving Alabama’s historically Black colleges became a part of the national dialogue around race-based policies and practices.

In 1995 Alabama State University, one of the state’s two public HBCUs, created a whites-only scholarship program to satisfy a court order to enroll more white students. In 1997, Jessie Tompkins, a Black graduate student at ASU, sued the college, claiming the program caused him and other Black students to be denied funding they would have otherwise received. A court dismissed the case in 1998.

More recently, in 2016, the Supreme Court ruled in favor of a Texas program that admitted the top students from wealthy and poor high schools into state universities.

Thursday’s ruling doesn’t entirely eliminate the consideration of race in college decisions. But it sets much sharper guardrails about how — and for how long — colleges should give weight to an applicant’s racial or ethnic identity.

“At the same time, nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university,” the court wrote. “Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

How will the Students for Fair Admissions decision affect Alabama colleges?

Experts say colleges most likely to be affected by the ruling are small, usually private, and highly-selective institutions – which make up a very small margin of schools across the country.

Most colleges have standard policies that aim to prevent discrimination and promote equal opportunities for employment and admission. Others also may have scholarships aimed at students who belong to an underrepresented group, or waive testing requirements to encourage a more diverse applicant pool.

A 2019 survey from the National Association for College Admission Counseling found that about one-quarter of colleges said race and ethnicity was a “moderate” or “considerable” factor in the admission’s process. Private and highly selective institutions tended to give greater consideration to a student’s demographic background, researchers found.

The vast majority of colleges, according to the Pew Research Center, already admit most students who apply.

In Alabama, all but one public college admitted 50% or more of their applicants, according to the College Board’s most recent collection of university admissions data. Private colleges in the state admitted between 25% and 60% of applicants.

In a statement to AL.com, Jim Purcell of the Alabama Commission on Higher Education said the decision likely would not impact state colleges.

“None of Alabama’s state-sponsored colleges and universities currently make admission decisions based upon race,” he said. “There are several state initiatives that support minority enrollment in fields for which they are underrepresented, but the admission to the institution is not based upon race.”

No public universities in Alabama reported considering race in admissions, nor did any require applicants to disclose their race, according to an AL.com review of fall 2023 applications.

Some private colleges, such as Amridge University and Faulkner University, required applicants to fill out their race and ethnicity, but did not specify that student demographics would be considered in the application process. Birmingham-Southern College gave students the option to describe how their identity or background is a meaningful part of their story.

The University of North Alabama required applicants to disclose their ethnicity for federal reporting purposes, but said that data would not be used in any way in the admission process.

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