The clock keeps ticking on the Harvard affirmative action case

The Harvard case challenging affirmative action in admissions as disadvantaging Asian applicants, about which we have blogged in the past, is still in the news. According the NY Times, plaintiffs have asked the US Supreme Court both to hear the case and to combine it with a related case from the U of North Carolina. One possibility is that this strategy is to put a public university rather than just a private before the Court. Meanwhile, the Court is said to be awaiting a brief from the Biden administration before deciding whether to hear the case.

If the Court were to invalidate affirmative action based on race, there is a question as to what the effect might be on UC. Ironically, because California voters did not go along with a ballot proposition that would have overturned the ban on affirmative action from Prop 209, UC might well argue that it doesn't do affirmative action and hasn't since Prop 209 was passed in the mid-1990s.

The NY Times article is at:

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/11/us/affirmative-action-harvard-unc.html.