Sotomayor, J., dissenting
By ending race-conscious college admissions, this Court closes the door of opportunity that the Court’s precedents helped open to young students of every race. It creates a leadership pipeline that is less diverse than our increasingly diverse society, reserving “positions of influence, affluence, and prestige in America” for a predominantly white pool of college graduates. Bakke, 438 U. S., at 401 (opinion of Marshall, J.). At its core, today’s decision exacerbates segregation and diminishes the inclusivity of our Nation’s institutions in service of superficial neutrality that promotes indifference to inequality and ignores the reality of race. *** True equality of educational opportunity in racially diverse schools is an essential component of the fabric of our democratic society. It is an interest of the highest order and a foundational requirement for the promotion of equal protection under the law. Brown recognized that passive race neutrality was inadequate to achieve the constitutional guarantee of racial equality in a Nation where the effects of segregation persist. In a society where race continues to matter, there is no constitutional requirement that institutions attempting to remedy their legacies of racial exclusion must operate with a blindfold.
Today, this Court overrules decades of precedent and imposes a superficial rule of race blindness on the Nation. The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated. The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial
(2022) (noting that from 2005 to 2017, 85% of Supreme Court law clerks were white, 9% were Asian American, 4% were Black, and 1.5% were Latino, and about half of all clerks during that period graduated from two law schools: Harvard and Yale); Brief for American Bar Association as Amicus Curiae 25 (noting that more than 85% of lawyers, more than 70% of Article III judges, and more than 80% of state judges in the United States are white, even though white people represent about 60% of the population).
