Coming Soon from the Supreme Court?

The US Supreme Court has been much in the news in the last few days with its rulings on guns and abortion. In the past, we have noted the University of North Carolina and Harvard admissions cases - essentially tests of affirmative action in admissions - will be before the Court in the fall. If you read yesterday's print LA Times - and got to the very end of the front-page analysis article by David Savage (most people don't finish long articles) - you would have read:

...The new court is also prepared to knock down another 1970s-era compromise on the role affirmative action plays in admissions to colleges and universities. In 1978, the court was split on whether to reject a University of California policy that set aside several slots for minority students at the UC Davis Medical School. Four justices thought this was an illegal quota, and four others thought it was reasonable affirmative action.

Powell was in the middle. He thought the set-asides were illegal, but he wrote approvingly of an admissions policy that used a student’s race as one “plus” factor to bring about diversity on campus. In Regents of the University of California vs. Bakke, Powell set the standard for admissions policies, and it was upheld later by O’Connor and Kennedy.

This fall, the justices will take up anti-discrimination challenges to the admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. They are almost certain to rule that any use of race in admissions is illegal and unconstitutional...

Full story at https://www.latimes.com/politics/story/2022-06-25/supreme-court-is-bold-confident-and-conservative-determined-to-move-the-law-to-the-right.

We have noted in prior postings that UC might be insulated from such an expected decision by California's Proposition 209, since it bans affirmative action in admissions and the university could thus argue that it complies with 209.* There is some irony in that situation since the Regents unsuccessfully supported voter repeal of 209 in the general election of 2020. Had voters obliged, that defense would have been eliminated. Whether 209 will fully insulate UC's admission practices remains to be seen, since there could be challenges to actual admissions practices, i.e., arguments that there are de facto preferences.

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*http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/05/briefs-on-pending-harvardu-of-north_24.html;

http://uclafacultyassociation.blogspot.com/2022/05/briefs-on-pending-harvardu-of-north.html.