Conservative Supreme Court justices indicated Monday that they are willing to end the explicit consideration of race in college admissions as they weighed cases challenging affirmative action policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard University.
Members of the court’s conservative majority questioned the legal rationale for allowing the practice and probed to what extent colleges and universities could enact new “race neutral” admissions policies aimed at improving racial diversity. Some justices, however, indicated they would be willing to allow applicants to discuss their racial identities in some form as part of essays touching upon their experiences, such as examples of overcoming discrimination.
Liberal justices, who are in the minority, defended the use of race in admissions, citing the importance of diversity on campus and the difficulty of achieving it without any consideration of race.
