ALITO, J., dissenting
II
UT’s race-conscious admissions program cannot satisfy strict scrutiny. UT says that the program furthers its interest in the educational benefits of diversity, but it has failed to define that interest with any clarity or to demonstrate that its program is narrowly tailored to achieve that or any other particular interest. By accepting UT’s rationales as sufficient to meet its burden, the majority licenses UT’s perverse assumptions about different groups of minority students—the precise assumptions strict scrutiny is supposed to stamp out.
A
“The moral imperative of racial neutrality is the driving force of the Equal Protection Clause.” Richmond v. J. A. Croson Co., 488 U. S. 469, 518 (1989) (KENNEDY, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment). “At the heart of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection lies the simple command that the Government must treat citizens as individuals, not as simply components of a racial, reli gious, sexual or national class.” Miller v. Johnson, 515 U. S. 900, 911 (1995) (internal quotation marks omitted). “Race-based assignments embody stereotypes that treat individuals as the product of their race, evaluating their thoughts and efforts—their very worth as citizens— according to a criterion barred to the Government by history and the Constitution.” Id., at 912 (internal quotation marks omitted). Given our constitutional commitment to “the doctrine of equality,” “ ‘[d]istinctions between citizens solely because of their ancestry are by their very nature odious to a free people.’ ” Rice v. Cayetano, 528 U. S. 495, 517 (2000) (quoting Hirabayashi v. United States, 320 U. S. 81, 100 (1943)).
“[B]ecause racial characteristics so seldom provide a relevant basis for disparate treatment, the Equal Protection Clause demands that racial classifications . . . be
