Sotomayor, J., dissenting
18–21, a heavy emphasis on grades and standardized test scores disproportionately disadvantages underrepresented racial minorities. Stated simply, race is one small piece of a much larger admissions puzzle where most of the pieces disfavor underrepresented racial minorities. That is precisely why underrepresented racial minorities remain underrepresented. The Court’s suggestion that an already advantaged racial group is “disadvantaged” because of a limited use of race is a myth.
The majority’s true objection appears to be that a limited use of race in college admissions does, in fact, achieve what it is designed to achieve: It helps equalize opportunity and advances respondents’ objectives by increasing the number of underrepresented racial minorities on college campuses, particularly Black and Latino students. This is unacceptable, the Court says, because racial groups that are not underrepresented “would be admitted in greater numbers” without these policies. Ante, at 28. Reduced to its simplest terms, the Court’s conclusion is that an increase in the representation of racial minorities at institutions of higher learning that were historically reserved for white Americans is an unfair and repugnant outcome that offends the Equal Protection Clause. It provides a license to discriminate against white Americans, the Court says, which requires the courts and state actors to “pic[k] the right races to benefit.” Ante, at 38.
Nothing in the Fourteenth Amendment or its history supports the Court’s shocking proposition, which echoes arguments made by opponents of Reconstruction-era laws and this Court’s decision in Brown. Supra, at 2–17. In a society where opportunity is dispensed along racial lines, racial equality cannot be achieved without making room for underrepresented groups that for far too long were denied admission through the force of law, including at Harvard and UNC. Quite the opposite: A racially integrated vision of so-
