The recently reconstituted US Supreme Court is widely expected to rule against affirmative action in university admissions in the wake of its decision to end half a century of legalised abortion nationwide. In January, the nation’s top court announced that it would review affirmative admission cases involving Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, with a verdict likely next summer.

This declaration of intent has raised concern that the court plans to use its 6-3 conservative majority to prohibit race-based preferences in college admissions. “The current court has clearly shown its willingness to directly overturn past precedents to achieve conservative policy goals, and I don’t see why this case would be different,” says Daniel Hirschman, assistant professor of sociology at Cornell University.

In the past, the Supreme Court has repeatedly upheld the basic principle of affirmative action. Last year lower courts ruled that Harvard and North Carolina universities were entitled to consider race when assessing a student for admission as part of wider efforts to create diverse campus communities.

But unlike the Supreme Court reversal on abortion —which went against the position backed by a majority of Americans – the idea of prohibiting affirmative action is politically popular. In 2020, voters in California – despite it being one of the most left-leaning states in the country – decisively rejected a bid to restore affirmative action in its public university system. Such votes show that Americans strongly support the idea of a meritocracy, and mistakenly believe their nation already is one, “despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary,” says Hirschman.

Affirmative action is also often dismissed as a relatively minor issue, given that highly competitive institutions enrol only a small percentage of US students. “Debate about admissions protocols at selective private schools in the United States is essentially a symbolic discourse,” says Mitchell Stevens, professor of education at Stanford University. The number of affected students is “statistically trivial”.
But in states with top-ranked public institutions, admission preferences still carry real weight. A nationwide study earlier this year by University of California, Los Angeles, researchers examining public medical schools, found that among states that ended affirmative action, the proportion of students from under-represented racial groups fell by more than a third within five years of their ban.

A nationwide rejection of affirmative action in admissions by the Supreme Court might however intensify pressure on US higher education institutions to take other important steps in the direction of racial and economic equity, says Dr. Hirschman. Those actions could include selective universities growing in size or adopting a lottery system among all applicants who meet a particular eligibility threshold, he suggests.