Supreme Court upends affirmative action in college admissions

The Supreme Court in a pair of cases Thursday severely limited the use of race as a factor in college admissions, upending decades of affirmative action programs that U.S. institutions have used to select students from their applicant pools.

In rulings that broke along ideological lines, the court’s six conservative justices invalidated Harvard’s and University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s (UNC) admissions practices by ruling they did not comply with the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection.

“Both programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points,” Chief Justice John Roberts wrote for the majority.