US Supreme Court kicks away the ladder of affirmative action in universities

The court's rejection of race-conscious admissions policies opens other policies like corporate diversity programs, which ramped up after the murder of George Floyd in 2020, to judicial scrutiny

Members of the Supreme Court (front left to right) Associate Justice Samuel Alito, Associate Justice Clarence Thomas, Chief Justice John Roberts, Associate Justice Stephen Breyer and Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor, (standing left to right) Associate Justice Brett Kavanaugh, Associate Justice Elena Kagan, Associate Justice Neil Gorsuch and Associate Justice Amy Coney Barrett. In an opinion drafted by Chief Justice John Roberts, the court rejected race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina on the grounds that they “cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause” of the Fourteenth Amendment. File picture: Erin Schaff/The New York Times via AP

Fifteen years ago, I watched in rapt attention as a resplendent, yet surreal, scene unfolded: the election of the first-ever African-American US president, Barack Obama. 

In the past week, the US Supreme Court, in a landmark 6-3 ruling, struck down what may have been one of the key factors in making that story possible: affirmative action in higher education.