The Supreme Court Could Overturn Another Major Precedent. This Time, Americans Might Agree.

By Amelia Thomson-DeVeaux and Zoha Qamar
OCT. 28, 2022, AT 6:00 AM

The Supreme Court is poised to upend decades of precedent on affirmative action. This Monday, the justices will hear two cases challenging race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The universities use race as one of many factors when deciding which applicants to accept — a practice that has been affirmed multiple times by the Supreme Court, including in a 2003 case where the justices ruled that ensuring racial diversity in higher education is important enough to justify the limited use of race in college admissions.

Now, just months after the Supreme Court upended a decades-old precedent on abortion rights, the precedent on affirmative action is in peril.

Although public opinion on abortion is complex, Americans mostly did not want the Supreme Court to overturn Roe v. Wade and end the constitutional right to abortion. But a ruling limiting or ending affirmative action in higher education — though it would have a huge impact on college admissions — is less likely to draw public outrage. That’s because affirmative action is unpopular, even though Americans do want there to be diversity in higher education.

For example, a Washington Post/Schar School poll conducted Oct. 7-10 found that near-identical shares of Americans supported a Supreme Court ruling “banning colleges and universities from considering a student’s race and ethnicity when making decisions about student admissions” (63 percent), and thought programs that promote racial diversity in higher education are a good thing (64 percent). This is a great example of one of the central tensions in how Americans think about race-conscious admissions: Many people are uncomfortable with the concept of singling out racial minorities for special treatment if it means other students will have to meet a higher standard, even though they also want universities to have racially diverse student bodies.

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