Sotomayor, J., dissenting
as a gauge of [respondents’] ability to enroll students who can offer underrepresented perspectives.” Id., at 383–384. By removing universities’ ability to assess the success of their programs, the Court obstructs these institutions’ ability to meet their diversity goals.
5
Justice Thomas, for his part, offers a multitude of arguments for why race-conscious college admissions policies supposedly “burden” racial minorities. Ante, at 39. None of them has any merit.
He first renews his argument that the use of race in holistic admissions leads to the “inevitable” “underperformance” by Black and Latino students at elite universities “because they are less academically prepared than the white and Asian students with whom they must compete.” Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 332 (concurring opinion). Justice Thomas speaks only for himself. The Court previously declined to adopt this so-called “mismatch” hypothesis for good reason: It was debunked long ago. The decades-old “studies” advanced by the handful of authors upon whom Justice Thomas relies, ante, at 40–41, have “major methodological flaws,” are based on unreliable data, and do not “meet the basic tenets of rigorous social science research.” Brief for Empirical Scholars as Amici Curiae 3, 9–25. By contrast, “[m]any social scientists have studied the impact of elite educational institutions on student outcomes, and have found, among other things, that attending a more selective school is associated with higher graduation rates and higher earnings for [underrepresented minority] students—conclusions directly contrary to mismatch.” Id., at 7–9 (collecting studies). This extensive body of research is supported by the most obvious data point available to this institution today: The three Justices of color on this Court graduated from elite universities and law schools with race-
