Opinion of the Court
work the least harm possible to other innocent persons competing for the benefit.” Id., at 341 (internal quotation marks omitted).
To manage these concerns, Grutter imposed one final limit on race-based admissions programs. At some point, the Court held, they must end. Id., at 342. This requirement was critical, and Grutter emphasized it repeatedly. “[A]ll race-conscious admissions programs [must] have a termination point”; they “must have reasonable durational limits”; they “must be limited in time”; they must have “sunset provisions”; they “must have a logical end point”; their “deviation from the norm of equal treatment” must be “a temporary matter.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted). The importance of an end point was not just a matter of repetition. It was the reason the Court was willing to dispense temporarily with the Constitution’s unambiguous guarantee of equal protection. The Court recognized as much: “[e]nshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences,” the Court explained, “would offend this fundamental equal protection principle.” Ibid.; see also id., at 342–343 (quoting N. Nathanson & C. Bartnik, The Constitutionality of Preferential Treatment for Minority Applicants to Professional Schools, 58 Chi. Bar Rec. 282, 293 (May–June 1977), for the proposition that “[i]t would be a sad day indeed, were America to become a quota-ridden society, with each identifiable minority assigned proportional representation in every desirable walk of life”).
Grutter thus concluded with the following caution: “It has been 25 years since Justice Powell first approved the use of race to further an interest in student body diversity in the context of public higher education. … We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” 539 U. S., at 343.
