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Why the Supreme Court decision on affirmative action matters

Elissa Nadworny

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday rejected race-conscious admissions in higher education at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, overturning more than 40 years of legal precedent .

The ruling in the two cases hands opponents of affirmative action a major victory. The opinion, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, found that the admissions programs at both universities violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

"However well-intentioned" the policies at UNC and Harvard were, Roberts wrote, the universities failed to use them within the confines of the narrow restrictions that previous court rulings had allowed.

Roberts also wrote that schools could still consider an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, "be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise." But not, he wrote, through a specific application essay or other means.

"This is a very strident curtailing of the ability to use race-conscious admissions policies," says Dominique Baker, a professor of education policy at Southern Methodist University. "This is bad. But it's important to pay attention to the details, because those details are how we think about what institutions can do right now at the moment as they're gearing up to start working on admissions for the next year."

In the Harvard case, the court considered whether the school discriminated against Asian American students in the admissions process. With UNC, the court considered whether the school was using race-conscious admissions in an appropriately limited manner. The conservative activist group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) was behind both the Harvard and the UNC cases.

The ruling mainly affects a select number of colleges

There are nearly 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S., and only a small portion — slightly more than 200 — have highly selective admissions, where fewer than 50% of applicants get in. That's just over 200 schools where the ruling on a race-conscious admissions process could make a significant difference.

And yet, despite how few students these policies would actually affect, what happens at these elite institutions matters.

They remain a key gatekeeper to access at high levels of government and industry. As just one example, currently eight of the nine Supreme Court justices attended law school at Harvard or Yale.

Can race play a role in college admissions? The Supreme Court hears the arguments

Recently, researchers from Georgetown University ran simulations to see what would happen if race was removed from college admissions. They found that a national ban would decrease the ethnic diversity of students at selective colleges, unless there was "a fundamental redesign of the college admissions system," which would include eliminating legacy and athletic recruitment, among other things.

In the simulations, removing race and relying on different combinations of high school grades, test scores, or social-economic indicators did not yield more ethnically diverse classes.

Zack Mabel, a professor of education and economics at Georgetown and an author on the research, explained the findings like this:

"It boils down to: The more information that you are able to consider about the educational opportunities and disadvantages that an individual has had in their life, the better you as an admissions officer are going to be at understanding who is going to be a qualified applicant."

Mabel says current admissions criteria reinforce disparities in educational opportunity that exist in the K-12 system, and that research has shown that at highly selective colleges, "students admitted with lower grades and scores are just as likely to succeed as the rest of their classmates."

This echoes previous research conducted in several states that have banned race-conscious admissions from ballot measures. Those statewide bans include Michigan since 2006 , California since 1996 (and reaffirmed in 2020), and Washington since 1998 ( and reaffirmed in 2019 ).

Broader implications throughout higher education

Experts say the court's new decision could have implications beyond just admissions.

"We have to think beyond just the who-gets-in and who-gets-to-enroll piece," says Baker, at Southern Methodist University. The ruling could affect financial aid decisions, including targeted scholarships and efforts by campuses to create communities of students from diverse backgrounds.

She wonders, for example, whether a program designed to increase the number of Black doctors — with support to complete the pre-med curriculum and get into medical school — will now be challenged.

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Affirmative action.

Mitchell Chang, who studies diversity in education at UCLA, says that after the statewide bans went into effect in Michigan, California and Washington, modifications to what was once more targeted "race-conscious scholarships, race-conscious programming, race-conscious recruitment" followed.

Today's ruling, he says, "may have a much broader sweep, in fact, than just with admissions."

OiYan Poon, a visiting education professor at the University of Maryland, College Park, points to early court filings from the plaintiffs in the Harvard case, arguing to end "any use of race or ethnicity in the educational setting" — not just in admissions.

But Liliana Garces, a professor of education at the University of Texas at Austin, maintains that Thursday's opinion is limited to race in college admissions — and nothing else. "The only legal issue that was before the court was the consideration of race in admissions."

She says it's now up to universities to implement the ruling in their practices and policies. But she believes this decision does not explicitly prohibit race-conscious decisions in other areas, such as financial aid. "It'll be important for institutions to hold their ground and be able to engage in those other practices that are absolutely foundational to their mission."

Baker agrees: "We want to make sure that we don't overstate what the legal contours are, because that might create a chilling effect where institutions restrict themselves further than the legal limits." She's especially interested in the line in Justice Roberts' majority opinion about how schools can still consider the way race impacted an applicant's life.

"That tells me that there are some pathways forward," Baker says. "But are those pathways forward the most effective ways of trying to achieve more racial equity within college admissions? No."

Colleges have used other ways to diversify student bodies — but they aren't always as effective

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Using race in admissions isn't the only way states and colleges have tried to diversify their incoming classes.

After California banned race-conscious admissions in 1996, the proportions of Black and Latino students at UCLA, one of the most highly selective schools in the state's system, fell drastically. By 2006, a decade later, only 96 Black students enrolled in a freshman class of nearly 5,000. They became known as the " Infamous 96 ."

The University of California responded to those numbers by recrafting its admissions policies to take a more "holistic" approach, considering several factors including whether students were the first in their family to go to college, what high school they went to, and their family's income. The university has spent more than 20 years, and hundreds of millions of dollars in new programs and scholarships, in efforts to restore that level of diversity.

Other ideas for promoting campus diversity include admitting a percentage of the state's high school students, like the University of Texas at Austin, which automatically admits Texas students in the top 6% of their high school graduating class . Lotteries have also been proposed, where eligible students with high qualifications would be randomly selected for acceptance.

How the Supreme Court has ruled in the past about affirmative action

But so far, researchers say, none of the alternatives has been as effective as considering race.

"Nothing is as good at helping to enroll a more racially equitable class than using race. Nothing comes close to it," says Baker. "There are other tools; other ideas. But if race is not taken into consideration, those different types of techniques and tools do not replicate what race-conscious admissions policies do."

What happens next

This opinion comes less than a decade since the last time the high court ruled on affirmative action. In Fisher v. University of Texas in 2016, the court ruled that colleges could consider race in admissions.

The two cases the court ruled on Thursday are Students for Fair Admission v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admission v. University of North Carolina .

While very similar, the cases represent two very different admissions environments: UNC is a state school that highly favors in-state students ( it's only allowed to admit 18% of first-year students from out of state ), while Harvard is a highly selective private school that admits fewer than 5% of all applicants (that's just under 2,000 students this fall ).

In amicus briefs filed with the Supreme Court ahead of the arguments in these two cases, the University of Michigan and the University of California, Berkeley both admitted that their efforts to meet their diversity goals, without using race, were falling short .

But not every school says it is struggling to achieve diversity without race-conscious admissions.

The attorney general of Oklahoma filed a brief on behalf of several states in support of the plaintiffs in the two cases: "The University of Oklahoma, for example, remains just as diverse today (if not more so) than it was when Oklahoma banned affirmative action in 2012." The university's main campus in Norman currently has a U.S. undergraduate student population that is about 60% white and 5% Black .

In the absence of race in the admissions process, Kelly Slay, an assistant professor at Vanderbilt University who studies affirmative action, expects to see colleges increase targeted recruitment, expand financial aid including free-college programs, and go test-optional, in an effort to maintain their ethnic and racial diversity.

But, she says, "we don't have anything that works as effectively at producing and enhancing racial diversity as race-conscious affirmative action. We have over 20 years of data and research on that."

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Supreme Court rejects race-based affirmative action in college admissions

The Supreme Court on Thursday held that race-conscious admissions programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina violate the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection, a historic ruling that rolls back decades of precedent and will force a dramatic change in how the nation’s private and public universities select their students.

The votes split along ideological grounds, with Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. writing for the conservative members in the majority, and the liberals dissenting. While the ruling examined Harvard and UNC, its impact will be felt across the nation.

Elite universities have contended that without considering race as one factor in admissions, their student bodies will contain more Whites and Asian Americans, and fewer Blacks and Hispanics.

But, “the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual — not on the basis of race,” Roberts wrote, joined by Justices Clarence Thomas, Samuel A. Alito Jr., Neil M. Gorsuch, Brett M. Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett. “Many universities have for too long done just the opposite. And in doing so, they have concluded, wrongly, that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Justice Sonia Sotomayor, the court’s first Latina and a proponent of affirmative action, read parts of her opinion from the bench in a show of profound disagreement.

“The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated,” she wrote in her dissent, which was joined by fellow liberal Justices Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson, who is the first Black woman on the high court. “The majority’s vision of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist so long as it is ignored.”

For Justices Thomas and Sotomayor, the affirmative action decision is deeply personal

It was the second time in as many terms that the court’s dominant conservative majority has abandoned decades-old, landmark rulings. The votes were 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, with Jackson recusing herself because she served on a board at Harvard.

Last year, the justices ended the guarantee of abortion rights that the high court found nearly 50 years ago in Roe v. Wade .

In her dissent, Sotomayor made a pointed reference to the speed at which the conservative majority is advancing its jurisprudence on key societal issues.

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“The six unelected members of today’s majority upend the status quo based on their policy preferences about what race in America should be like, but is not, and their preferences for a veneer of colorblindness in a society where race has always mattered and continues to matter in fact and in law,” she wrote.

The court first approved the limited use of affirmative action in college admissions decisions 45 years ago, in a decision that illustrated the justices’ delicate balancing of the Constitution’s guarantee of equal protection with society’s goal of remedying past discrimination and segregation. It settled on allowing some consideration of race because of the benefits of a diverse student body.

Are you a student, teacher or counselor affected by the Supreme Court's affirmative action decision? Tell us.

Since then, allowance of some racial considerations has been upheld in close cases. Roberts’s majority opinion did not specifically say the court was overturning the foundation of those rulings, the 2003 opinion known as Grutter v. Bollinger . But he said the majority in Grutter had envisioned its expiration in 25 years.

“Twenty years later, no end is in sight,” Roberts wrote.

Supreme Court 2023 decisions

University programs that take race into account must meet the court’s strictest constitutional scrutiny, “may never use race as a stereotype or negative, and — at some point — they must end,” Roberts wrote. “However well intentioned and implemented in good faith,” he continued, the programs at Harvard and UNC “fail each of these criteria.”

If Roberts was unwilling to declare Grutter was no longer good precedent , Thomas, a longtime opponent of affirmative action, was not.

“The Court’s opinion rightly makes clear that Grutter is, for all intents and purposes, overruled,” Thomas wrote. “And it sees the universities’ admissions policies for what they are: rudderless, race-based preferences designed to ensure a particular racial mix in their entering classes.”

While leaders of elite private and public institutions have said they fear a dramatic drop in diversity if they are prohibited from taking race into account, Roberts noted that those rules are already the norm in many places.

“Three out of every five American universities do not consider race in their admissions decisions,” he wrote. “And several States — including some of the most populous (California, Florida, and Michigan) — have prohibited race-based admissions outright.”

President Biden appeared before reporters Thursday afternoon to express his disagreement with the decision. He defended affirmative action as a necessary tool, saying it enables colleges to admit a more diverse group of students who meet their admissions criteria.

“Discrimination still exists in America,” Biden said, repeating the phrase two more times for emphasis. He said he was directing the Education Department to “analyze what practices” at colleges and universities “help build a more inclusive and diverse student body and what practices hold that back.”

Military academies use affirmative action. Will the Supreme Court stop them?

Roberts said that “nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise.” But Sotomayor derided that approach as putting “lipstick on a pig,” because of Roberts’s caveats that such benefits “must be tied to that student’s courage and determination” or “tied to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university.”

Many college and university presidents had asked the court to allow the policies of Harvard and UNC, and lamented the ruling. Some said it signaled the end of an era of court deference to higher education.

“It’s saying to American universities, ‘We no longer trust you to handle race and ethnicity in ways that are consistent with the Constitution, even though we set up this system with you,’” said Lee Bollinger, the outgoing president of Columbia University, who was a party to the 2003 ruling when he was president of the University of Michigan. The effects, he said, “will be tragic — very, very serious.”

Elizabeth H. Bradley, president of Vassar College in New York, said she thinks colleges like hers will figure out how to maintain an inclusive environment. “It’s just so core to who we are,” Bradley said. “We will find a legal way in which that can be accomplished.”

But those at places where the consideration of race already is banned said maintaining diversity will be difficult.

“We know firsthand from our own data how a ban on affirmative action can really affect the diversity of especially your undergraduate populations,” said Santa J. Ono, the current president at Michigan. Still, he said Michigan has managed to find other methods to attract students from a variety of racial backgrounds. “It’s a lot of work. It takes a lot of resource and time, but with time it is possible .”

As recently as 2016, the court upheld an affirmative action program at the University of Texas, concluding for the third time that educational diversity justifies the consideration of race as one factor in admission decisions.

But Sotomayor is the only justice remaining on the court from that slim, 4-3 majority. At the time, conservative activist Edward Blum, who brought previous challenges to the practice , was already working on new lawsuits he could present to a rebuilt court.

On Thursday, he declared victory.

“The polarizing, stigmatizing and unfair jurisprudence that allowed colleges and universities to use a student’s race and ethnicity as a factor to admit or reject them has been overruled,” Blum said in a statement. “Ending racial preferences in college admissions is an outcome that the vast majority of all races and ethnicities will celebrate.”

The court’s foundational affirmative action case, Regents of the University of California v. Bakke , splintered the court and produced six opinions. The same was true Thursday.

Thomas, who for decades was in the minority as the court upheld versions of affirmative action policies, took the unusual step of reading from his concurring opinion immediately after Roberts read the majority’s decision.

He said he was writing to make the case for a “color-blind” Constitution, although he acknowledged being “painfully aware of the social and economic ravages which have befallen my race and all who suffer discrimination.”

In his concurring opinion, Thomas directly engaged with Jackson, one of the court’s most liberal members, and the only other Black justice. In her view, he wrote, “almost all of life’s outcomes may be unhesitatingly ascribed to race.”

Jackson’s dissent, which she did not read from the bench, responded to what she called Thomas’s “prolonged attack.”

“With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” Jackson wrote. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

Kavanaugh, in his opinion, said ending racial preferences was truer to the court’s precedents than upholding their use.

“I respectfully part ways with my dissenting colleagues on the question of whether, under this Court’s precedents, race-based affirmative action in higher education may extend indefinitely into the future,” he wrote. “The dissents suggest that the answer is yes. But this Court’s precedents make clear that the answer is no.”

Jackson dismissed Grutter’s call for an end of the programs in 25 years as more of a rhetorical flourish. “Equality is an ongoing project in a society where racial inequality persists,” she wrote. “A temporal requirement that rests on the fantasy that racial inequality will end at a predictable hour is illogical and unworkable.”

And she had a retort for Roberts when he said there might be one place for continued considerations of race. In a footnote, the chief justice acknowledged that federal government’s interest in diversity recruitment at the nation’s military academies. He held out the possibility that an argument could be considered in a future case, “in light of the potentially distinct interests that military academies may present.”

Wrote Jackson: “The Court has come to rest on the bottom-line conclusion that racial diversity in higher education is only worth potentially preserving insofar as it might be needed to prepare Black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom (a particularly awkward place to land, in light of the history the majority opts to ignore).”

In the North Carolina case that was decided Thursday, Blum’s group Students for Fair Admissions said the flagship university’s policies discriminated against White and Asian applicants by giving preference to Black, Hispanic and Native American ones.

The case against Harvard, also decided Thursday, accused the university of discriminating against Asian American students by employing subjective standards to limit the numbers accepted.

Here's what the Supreme Court justices had said before on affirmative action

Thursday’s ruling came from the most diverse Supreme Court in history . Five of the nine justices had never cast a vote on affirmative action before this term, although some — notably Thomas and Sotomayor — have said the policy played a dramatic role in their lives. Those two justices came away from the experience with vividly different views.

Sotomayor has been the boldest defender of what she prefers to call “race-sensitive” admission policies and has referred to herself as the “perfect affirmative action child.” Without a boost, she has said, she probably never would have been transported from Bronx housing projects to the Ivy League. But she excelled as a top student at Princeton and Yale Law School once she got there.

Thomas, the second Black justice, countered that he felt affirmative action made his diploma from Yale Law practically worthless; he has been a fierce opponent of racial preferences in his three decades on the court. “Racial paternalism … can be as poisonous and pernicious as any other form of discrimination,” he has written.

Education Secretary Miguel Cardona said that in the coming months, the administration would provide standards that it thinks colleges should follow, convene a national summit in response to the decision, and detail best practices in admissions policy.

“We have to make sure that we’re giving our students and our universities clarity and quickly communicating what this means and how they can continue to promote diversity,” Cardona said.

He said he hoped to send a message to historically underserved communities: “We see you, and we need you. Don’t let this … deter you from pursuing your educational potential. Our colleges and our country itself cannot thrive or compete in the 21st century without your talent, without your ingenuity, perseverance and ambition.”

The cases are Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.

Ann E. Marimow, Nick Anderson, Susan Svrluga and Matt Viser contributed to this report.

How to Talk About Race on College Applications, According to Admissions Experts

R afael Figueroa, dean of college guidance at Albuquerque Academy, was in the middle of tutoring Native American and Native Hawaiian students on how to write college application essays when the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that the race-conscious college admissions processes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional .

Earlier in the week, he told the students that they shouldn’t feel like they need to talk about their ethnicity in their essays. But after the June 29 Supreme Court ruling , he backtracked. “If I told you that you didn’t have to write about your native or cultural identity, you need to get ready to do another supplemental essay” on it or prepare a story that can fit into short answer questions, he says he told them.

For high school seniors of color applying to colleges in the coming years, the essay and short answer sections will take on newfound importance. Chief Justice John Roberts suggested as much when he wrote in his majority opinion, “Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration or otherwise.” That “discussion” is usually in an essay, and many colleges have additional short-answer questions that allow students to expand more on their background and where they grew up.

“The essay is going to take up a lot more space than maybe it has in the past because people are going to be really trying to understand who this person is that is going to come into our community,” says Timothy Fields, senior associate dean of undergraduate admission at Emory University.

Now, college admissions officers are trying to figure out how to advise high schoolers on their application materials to give them the best chance to showcase their background under the new rules, which will no longer allow colleges or universities to use race as an explicit factor in admissions decisions .

Shereem Herndon-Brown, who co-wrote The Black Family’s Guide to College Admissions with Fields, says students of color can convey their racial and ethnic backgrounds by writing about their families and their upbringing. “I’ve worked with students for years who have written amazing essays about how they spend Yom Kippur with their family, which clearly signals to a college that they are Jewish—how they listened to the conversations from their grandfather about escaping parts of Europe… Their international or immigrant story comes through whether it’s from the Holocaust or Croatia or the Ukraine. These are stories that kind of smack colleges in the face about culture.”

“Right now, we’re asking Black and brown kids to smack colleges in the face about being Black and brown,” he continues. “And, admittedly, I am mixed about the necessity to do it. But I think the only way to do it is through writing.”

Read More: The ‘Infamous 96’ Know Firsthand What Happens When Affirmative Action Is Banned

Students of color who are involved in extracurriculars that are related to diversity efforts should talk about those prominently in their college essays, other experts say. Maude Bond, director of college counseling at Cate School in Santa Barbara County, California, cites one recent applicant she counseled who wrote her college essay about an internship with an anti-racism group and how it helped her highlight the experiences of Asian American Pacific Islanders in the area.

Bond also says there are plenty of ways for people of color to emphasize their resilience and describe the character traits they learned from overcoming adversity: “Living in a society where you’re navigating racism every day makes you very compassionate.” she says. “It gives you a different sense of empathy and understanding. Not having the same resources as people that you grow up with makes you more creative and innovative.” These, she argues, are characteristics students should highlight in their personal essays.

Adam Nguyen, a former Columbia University admissions officer who now counsels college applicants via his firm Ivy Link, will also encourage students of color to ask their teachers and college guidance counselors to hint at their race or ethnicity in their recommendation letters. “That’s where they could talk about your racial background,” Nguyen says. “Just because you can’t see what’s written doesn’t mean you can’t influence how or what is said about you.”

Yet as the essay portions of college applications gain more importance, the process of reading applications will take a lot longer, raising the question of whether college admissions offices have enough staffers to get through the applications. “There are not enough admission officers in the industry to read that way,” says Michael Pina, director of admission at the University of Richmond.

That could make it even more difficult for students to get the individual attention required to gain acceptance to the most elite colleges. Multiple college admissions experts say college-bound students will need to apply to a broader range of schools. “You should still apply to those 1% of colleges…but you should think about the places that are producing high-quality graduates that are less selective,” says Pina.

One thing more Black students should consider, Fields argues, is applying to historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs). (In fact, Fields, a graduate of Morehouse College, claims that may now be “necessary” for some students.) “There’s something to be said, for a Black person to be in a majority environment someplace that they are celebrated, not tolerated,” Fields says. “There’s something to be said about being in an environment where you don’t have to justify why you’re here.”

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Should college essays touch on race? Some feel the affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. (AP Video: Noreen Nasir)

Hillary Amofa listens to others member of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

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Hillary Amofa, laughs as she participates in a team building game with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa, second from left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, stands for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

*Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait outside of the school in Portland, Ore., Wednesday, March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

Hillary Amofa, left, practices with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Hillary Amofa sits for a portrait after her step team practice at Lincoln Park High School Friday, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. When she started writing her college essay, Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. She wrote about being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana, about growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. She described hardship and struggle. Then she deleted it all. “I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18 year-old senior, “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.” (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

FILE - Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

CHICAGO (AP) — When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education, it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some of her classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

“For a lot of students, there’s a feeling of, like, having to go through something so horrible to feel worthy of going to school, which is kind of sad,” said Amofa, the daughter of a hospital technician and an Uber driver.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action . The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John Roberts wrote universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

“A benefit to a student who overcame racial discrimination, for example, must be tied to that student’s courage and determination,” he wrote.

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds. Brown University asked applicants how “an aspect of your growing up has inspired or challenged you.” Rice University asked students how their perspectives were shaped by their “background, experiences, upbringing, and/or racial identity.”

Hillary Amofa, reflected right, practices in a mirror with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team after school, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WONDERING IF SCHOOLS ‘EXPECT A SOB STORY’

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, he knew the stakes were higher than ever because of the court’s decision. His first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child.

Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “And if you don’t provide that, then maybe they’re not going to feel like you went through enough to deserve having a spot at the university. I wrestled with that a lot.”

He wrote drafts focusing on his childhood, but it never amounted to more than a collection of memories. Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. The essay had humor — it centered on a water gun fight where he had victory in sight but, in a comedic twist, slipped and fell. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and getting made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

“I was like, ‘OK, I’m going to write this for me, and we’re just going to see how it goes,’” he said. “It just felt real, and it felt like an honest story.”

The essay describes a breakthrough as he learned “to take ownership of myself and my future by sharing my true personality with the people I encounter. ... I realized that the first chapter of my own story had just been written.”

Max Decker, a senior at Lincoln High School, sits for a portrait in the school library where he often worked on writing his college essays, in Portland, Ore., March 20, 2024. (AP Photo/Amanda Loman)

A RULING PROMPTS PIVOTS ON ESSAY TOPICS

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Oregon, had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he constantly felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” he wrote.

As a first-generation college student, Decker thought about the subtle ways his peers seemed to know more about navigating the admissions process . They made sure to get into advanced classes at the start of high school, and they knew how to secure glowing letters of recommendation.

Max Decker reads his college essay on his experience with a leadership group for young Black men. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

If writing about race would give him a slight edge and show admissions officers a fuller picture of his achievements, he wanted to take that small advantage.

His first memory about race, Decker said, was when he went to get a haircut in elementary school and the barber made rude comments about his curly hair. Until recently, the insecurity that moment created led him to keep his hair buzzed short.

Through Word is Bond, Decker said he found a space to explore his identity as a Black man. It was one of the first times he was surrounded by Black peers and saw Black role models. It filled him with a sense of pride in his identity. No more buzzcut.

The pressure to write about race involved a tradeoff with other important things in his life, Decker said. That included his passion for journalism, like the piece he wrote on efforts to revive a once-thriving Black neighborhood in Portland. In the end, he squeezed in 100 characters about his journalism under the application’s activities section.

“My final essay, it felt true to myself. But the difference between that and my other essay was the fact that it wasn’t the truth that I necessarily wanted to share,” said Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane, in New Orleans, because of the region’s diversity. “It felt like I just had to limit the truth I was sharing to what I feel like the world is expecting of me.”

Demonstrators protest outside of the Supreme Court in Washington, in this June 29, 2023 file photo, after the Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in college admissions, saying race cannot be a factor. (AP Photo/Jose Luis Magana)

SPELLING OUT THE IMPACT OF RACE

Before the Supreme Court ruling, it seemed a given to Imani Laird that colleges would consider the ways that race had touched her life. But now, she felt like she had to spell it out.

As she started her essay, she reflected on how she had faced bias or felt overlooked as a Black student in predominantly white spaces.

There was the year in math class when the teacher kept calling her by the name of another Black student. There were the comments that she’d have an easier time getting into college because she was Black .

“I didn’t have it easier because of my race,” said Laird, a senior at Newton South High School in the Boston suburbs who was accepted at Wellesley and Howard University, and is waiting to hear from several Ivy League colleges. “I had stuff I had to overcome.”

In her final essays, she wrote about her grandfather, who served in the military but was denied access to GI Bill benefits because of his race.

She described how discrimination fueled her ambition to excel and pursue a career in public policy.

“So, I never settled for mediocrity,” she wrote. “Regardless of the subject, my goal in class was not just to participate but to excel. Beyond academics, I wanted to excel while remembering what started this motivation in the first place.”

Hillary Amofa stands for a portrait after practice with members of the Lincoln Park High School step team, March 8, 2024, in Chicago. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

WILL SCHOOLS LOSE RACIAL DIVERSITY?

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at some public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

Hillary Amofa reads her college essay on embracing her natural hair. (AP Video/Noreen Nasir)

The first drafts of her essay focused on growing up in a low-income family, sharing a bedroom with her brother and grandmother. But it didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said.

Her final essay tells how she came to embrace her natural hair . She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro. When her grandmother sent her back with braids or cornrows, they made fun of those too.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“I stopped seeing myself through the lens of the European traditional beauty standards and started seeing myself through the lens that I created,” Amofa wrote.

“Criticism will persist, but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Ma reported from Portland, Oregon.

The Associated Press’ education coverage receives financial support from multiple private foundations. AP is solely responsible for all content. Find AP’s standards for working with philanthropies, a list of supporters and funded coverage areas at AP.org .

A Big Problem With College Admissions Could Be About to Get Worse

If affirmative action ends, how much more perverse could the process become?

The year after I graduated from college, I worked as an admissions officer at a highly selective private university, where about 12 percent of students who apply get in. My colleagues and I evaluated and scrutinized thousands of applications. I ​​searched for the highest-achieving students and the most thoughtful stories to satisfy the university’s goal of creating an academically competitive, personally compelling, and racially diverse class.

Before long, I realized that this job had constraints. I got the clear message that I should reward high-achieving students from historically marginalized backgrounds who also described struggle and adversity in their admissions essays. That these students should have to prove their worthiness by putting their trauma on display seemed obviously unfair. A few years later, I pursued a Ph.D. in sociology to study the admissions process . My research showed me that the valorization of trauma narratives is widespread in selective colleges’ admissions departments—and that students from marginalized communities are well aware that their applications have a higher chance of success when they describe the difficulties they’ve faced.

Read: The college-admissions merit myth

This problem could worsen if the Supreme Court disbands affirmative action in its decisions for the cases Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina . Schools will still want racially diverse classes. Twenty-five Harvard student and alumni groups filed an amicus brief detailing the importance of diversity at the school. Stanford University, MIT, Amherst College, and dozens of other selective schools signed briefs expressing commitments to diversity and holistic admissions practices. So if schools are forbidden from formally asking for students’ racial identities, the college essay could become even more important as a way for students to signal their race.

Race currently shapes students’ essays and how admissions officers read them. The 20 admissions officers I interviewed at competitive private universities for my dissertation (to be completed in 2024) bear this out. They revealed that wealthier and white students tend to write about sports injuries, mission trips to the global South, and the plight of other marginalized groups they served in their various community-service activities. Students from lower-income backgrounds, especially those mentored by college-preparatory nonprofits, write about their trauma. These students typically tell stories about food insecurity, assuming the role of a parent in their households, working at local grocery stores to buy and prepare food for younger siblings, the threat of gun violence on their route to school, and perpetual homelessness. These findings are consonant with research from Stanford about the interrelatedness of college-essay content and household income .

College-admissions officers, 65 percent of whom are white, express deep ambivalence about trauma-focused essays. They told me that they do not encourage applicants to write about trauma, but they admit that these narratives provide helpful context when so many students are applying with so few opportunities to distinguish themselves, and when schools want to ensure adequate racial diversity in their classes.

Read: The absurdity of college admissions

Essays about struggle helped John, a white admissions officer at a small private liberal-arts college in New England, acknowledge the challenges that students endured. (I have changed the names of the people I interviewed to protect participants’ privacy under ethical-research guidelines.) Although he criticized the “trauma porn” he regularly encountered in college-admissions essays, he insisted that some more information about student backgrounds was necessary. “When I’m reading those essays about certain traumas,” John told me, “[I’m] really appreciative of the additional perspectives.” Context about a student’s difficult background or upbringing, John said, better positioned him to advocate for them. With limited spots, even students who have near-perfect academic records needed a little extra “something” to help them stand out. For racially marginalized students, a trauma narrative could fill that gap. Sarah, a white admissions officer at a highly selective southern university, said she found stories of trauma “distressing” but found the additional context about the students’ lives helpful and important to consider.

But what about the students who chose not to disclose their trauma or struggle in their college essay? John said he doesn’t “want to penalize students who maybe don’t have an essay that shows grit and resilience.” He was not alone in this belief. Other officers emphasized that Black and low-income students who chose more lighthearted topics would not be disadvantaged in the admissions process.

Still, according to Sarah, John, and others I interviewed, some admissions officers perceive stories that highlight a student’s ability to overcome a struggle as an indication of their ability to endure challenges once in college. Awareness of a student’s resilience allowed officers to say, “Look at what this student has overcome, and they managed to maintain a nearly perfect GPA; they deserve a shot.”

Still, the officers knew that this expectation for marginalized students to explain themselves to colleges is not entirely fair. Brenda, a white admissions officer for a Texas-based university, told me that reading trauma essays sometimes moves her to tears. “There are essays that made me cry. There have been days when I have sat for 30 minutes under my desk, just bawling, because of that essay that I read and the experience that the student had. There are days when I have to take a break, and I have to shut down my computer and say, ‘I can’t deal with this anymore.’ And there are also days when sometimes I get really angry, right? Like, why do young people have to experience such hard things in their lives? And why do they have to overcome this stuff?”

Similarly, John admitted, ​​“I don’t want any of the students to feel as though they have to divulge their personal challenges in a really raw and kind of painful way just to get into college. There’s something that feels very perverse about that.”

Despite this perversity, students know the power that a trauma-focused essay has in the admissions process. The 37 Black undergraduate students I interviewed for my dissertation and the nearly 100 students I have encountered at college workshops say they believe that a story of struggle is necessary to show that they are “diverse.” Black students believe that college counselors and admissions officers link their racial identities to trauma.

If these types of essays are already so important, imagine how much bigger a role they could play if they become the only way for students to let colleges know about their racial identities. How much more “perverse” could the process become?

In oral arguments for the SFFA cases , several Supreme Court justices anticipated this problem, asking questions about how schools should evaluate personal information that students reveal in college essays. The attorney for the anti-affirmative-action side said that in addition to not asking applicants directly for their race, colleges should also not take into account racial information that appears in an essay.

But higher education without affirmative action would not mean a future in which race is removed from the admissions process—that would be impossible. Instead, it could create a process in which certain students face even more pressure to put their pain on display.

People are dunking on JFK's half-assed Harvard admission essay in the wake of the Supreme Court axing affirmative action

• The Supreme Court ruled to overturn race-based affirmative action on Thursday.
• After the ruling, many focused on John F. Kennedy's underwhelming 1935 Harvard admission essay.
• People painted Kennedy as a classic legacy admission — a system that exists in some form today.

In the wake of the Supreme Court's decision on affirmative action , the essay John F. Kennedy wrote in 1935 emerged online as a topic of discussion — and derision.

The essay, which was first published by The Washington Post in 2013, reappeared on social media on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action in college admissions was unconstitutional.

Affirmative action — giving additional weight to applicants from disadvantaged demographics — had been upheld for four decades and helped minority groups access elite institutions like Harvard.

When Kennedy applied there, aged 17, the process was nowhere near as rigorous, with an application form just three pages long, per The Post.

Kennedy did not appear to be trying very hard to impress the school, other than name-dropping his rich father.

"The reasons that I have for wishing to go to Harvard are several. I feel that Harvard can give me a better background and a better liberal education than any other university," the essay read. 

Related stories

"I have always wanted to go there, as I have felt that it is not just another college, but is a university with something definite to offer. Then too, I would like to go to the same college as my father. To be a 'Harvard man' is an enviable distinction and one that I sincerely hope I shall attain," it added. That was it.

—Rebecca Brenner Graham, PhD (@TheOtherRBG) June 29, 2023

The short essay shocked people on social media, who pointed out that the mention of Kennedy's father — a wealthy businessman who graduated from Harvard in 1912 — was most likely what got him into the Ivy League. 

One person jokingly tweeted : "Getting into Harvard: 1) be a person of color in the top 20 of every student in America, with SATs and recommendation from a state senator. 2) have Robert Kennedy be your dad, write something about being a Harvard man on a cocktail napkin, and transcribe it to your application."

Although Kennedy's example was extreme and unlikely to cut muster today, US colleges do explicitly favor applicants whose parents went there, via the legacy system.

Commentators — including President Joe Biden — on Thursday noted that the legacy system remained untouched by the court ruling.

The system, they complained, left colleges unable to shape their decisions on grounds or race, but able to do so based on applicants' parents, who are likely to already be privileged thesmelves, and probably white.

Kennedy started his degree in 1936 and graduated cum laude in 1940 with a Bachelor of Arts in government. He became America's 35th president around 20 years later.

Harvard admissions have become extremely competitive in the years since Kennedy applied.

In 1935, a total of 7,870 students were admitted to Harvard, according to a Harvard Crimson article at the time.

Only 1,984 people were admitted into the class of 2026, making the admission rate just 3%, according to the Ivy League's website. 

The Supreme Court's ruling on Thursday was criticized by many, including Justice Sonia Sotomayor, who argued in a dissenting opinion that it failed to understand the critical role race plays in society.

A group of Harvard University administrators  said in a statement  that the school would "continue to be a vibrant community whose members come from all walks of life, all over the world."

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Should college essays touch on race? Some say affirmative action ruling leaves them no choice

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When she started writing her college essay, Hillary Amofa told the story she thought admissions offices wanted to hear. About being the daughter of immigrants from Ghana and growing up in a small apartment in Chicago. About hardship and struggle.

Then she deleted it all.

“I would just find myself kind of trauma-dumping,” said the 18-year-old senior at Lincoln Park High School in Chicago. “And I’m just like, this doesn’t really say anything about me as a person.”

When the Supreme Court ended affirmative action in higher education , it left the college essay as one of few places where race can play a role in admissions decisions. For many students of color, instantly more was riding on the already high-stakes writing assignment. Some say they felt pressure to exploit their hardships as they competed for a spot on campus.

Supreme Court strikes down race-based affirmative action in college admissions

In another major reversal, the Supreme Court forbids the use of race as an admissions factor at colleges and universities.

June 29, 2023

Amofa was just starting to think about her essay when the court issued its decision, and it left her with a wave of questions. Could she still write about her race? Could she be penalized for it? She wanted to tell colleges about her heritage but she didn’t want to be defined by it.

In English class, Amofa and her classmates read sample essays that all seemed to focus on some trauma or hardship. It left her with the impression she had to write about her life’s hardest moments to show how far she’d come. But she and some classmates wondered if their lives had been hard enough to catch the attention of admissions offices.

This year’s senior class is the first in decades to navigate college admissions without affirmative action. The Supreme Court upheld the practice in decisions going back to the 1970s, but this court’s conservative supermajority found it is unconstitutional for colleges to give students extra weight because of their race alone.

Still, the decision left room for race to play an indirect role: Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. wrote that universities can still consider how an applicant’s life was shaped by their race, “so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability.”

Scores of colleges responded with new essay prompts asking about students’ backgrounds.

Post-affirmative action, Asian American families are more stressed than ever about college admissions

Parents who didn’t grow up in the American system, and who may have moved to the U.S. in large part for their children’s education, feel desperate and in-the-dark. Some shell out tens of thousands of dollars for consultants as early as junior high.

Nov. 26, 2023

When Darrian Merritt started writing his essay, his first instinct was to write about events that led to him going to live with his grandmother as a child. Those were painful memories, but he thought they might play well at schools like Yale, Stanford and Vanderbilt.

“I feel like the admissions committee might expect a sob story or a tragic story,” said Merritt, a senior in Cleveland. “I wrestled with that a lot.”

Eventually he abandoned the idea and aimed for an essay that would stand out for its positivity.

Merritt wrote about a summer camp where he started to feel more comfortable in his own skin. He described embracing his personality and defying his tendency to please others. But the essay also reflects on his feelings of not being “Black enough” and being made fun of for listening to “white people music.”

Like many students, Max Decker of Portland, Ore., had drafted a college essay on one topic, only to change direction after the Supreme Court ruling in June.

Decker initially wrote about his love for video games. In a childhood surrounded by constant change, navigating his parents’ divorce, the games he took from place to place on his Nintendo DS were a source of comfort.

‘We’re really worried’: What do colleges do now after affirmative action ruling?

The Supreme Court’s ban on affirmative action has triggered angst on campuses about how to promote diversity without considering race in admissions decisions.

But the essay he submitted to colleges focused on the community he found through Word Is Bond, a leadership group for young Black men in Portland.

As the only biracial, Jewish kid with divorced parents in a predominantly white, Christian community, Decker wrote he felt like the odd one out. On a trip with Word Is Bond to Capitol Hill, he and friends who looked just like him shook hands with lawmakers. The experience, he wrote, changed how he saw himself.

“It’s because I’m different that I provide something precious to the world, not the other way around,” wrote Decker, whose top college choice is Tulane in New Orleans because of the region’s diversity.

Amofa used to think affirmative action was only a factor at schools like Harvard and Yale. After the court’s ruling, she was surprised to find that race was taken into account even at public universities she was applying to.

Now, without affirmative action, she wondered if mostly white schools will become even whiter.

A lot of what you’ve heard about affirmative action is wrong

Debate leading up to the Supreme Court’s decision has stirred up plenty of misconceptions. We break down the myths and explain the reality.

It’s been on her mind as she chooses between Indiana University and the University of Dayton, both of which have relatively few Black students. When she was one of the only Black students in her grade school, she could fall back on her family and Ghanaian friends at church. At college, she worries about loneliness.

“That’s what I’m nervous about,” she said. “Going and just feeling so isolated, even though I’m constantly around people.”

The first drafts of her essay didn’t tell colleges about who she is now, she said. Her final essay describes how she came to embrace her natural hair. She wrote about going to a mostly white grade school where classmates made jokes about her afro.

Over time, she ignored their insults and found beauty in the styles worn by women in her life. She now runs a business doing braids and other hairstyles in her neighborhood.

“Criticism will persist,” she wrote “but it loses its power when you know there’s a crown on your head!”

Collin Binkley, Annie Ma and Noreen Nasir write for the Associated Press. Binkley and Nasir reported from Chicago and Ma from Portland, Ore.

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Sept. 22, 2023

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Sept. 16, 2023

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U.S. Supreme Court strikes down use of affirmative action in college admissions

By: ariana figueroa and ashley murray - june 29, 2023 12:36 pm.

Harvard student Samaga Pokharel, holding the “My Race is My Story” sign, and other demonstrators gather Oct. 31, 2022, in front of the U.S. Supreme Court as two cases challenging affirmative action were being argued inside. Photo by Ariana Figueroa/States Newsroom.

The U.S. Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that two prominent universities’ consideration of race in acceptances violated the U.S. Constitution, effectively reshaping the role of affirmative action in the college admissions process throughout higher education.

In a 6-3 decision , Chief Justice John Roberts, writing for the majority, wrote that the admissions processes at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violate the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

“Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,” Roberts wrote.

“Many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. This Nation’s constitutional history does not tolerate that choice,” Roberts continued.

Because Harvard is a private institution and UNC is a public institution, this decision affects higher education across the board.

The three liberal justices, Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Sotomayor wrote the dissenting opinion, and argued that while the equal protection clause “enshrines a guarantee of racial equality,” the Supreme Court “long ago concluded that this guarantee can be enforced through race-conscious means in a society that is not, and has never been, colorblind.”

“In so holding, the Court cements a superficial rule of colorblindness as a constitutional principle in an endemically segregated society where race has always mattered and continues to matter,” she wrote. “The Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”

Sotomayor argued that Harvard and UNC ​​both “have sordid legacies of racial exclusion.” UNC’s founders included slaveholders and members of the white supremacist group the Ku Klux Klan and the university resisted integration until it finally admitted the first Black student in 1963, she wrote.

“To this day, UNC’s deep-seated legacy of racial subjugation continues to manifest itself in student life,” she wrote, noting that many buildings still bear the names of members of the Ku Klux Klan.

Sotomayor noted that slavery and racial subordination were integral to Harvard’s founding.

“It is against this historical backdrop that Harvard and UNC have reckoned with their past and its lingering effects,” she wrote.

Jackson joined that dissenting opinion but recused herself from the Harvard portion of the decision.

Jackson participated in the debate of the UNC case but not the Harvard case because she is a graduate of Harvard College and Harvard Law School and recently sat on the Harvard Board of Overseers, which is one of the two governing boards for Harvard University.

The decision stems from a 2014 lawsuit against Harvard College and a separate lawsuit against the University of North Carolina. The two suits sought to overturn Grutter v. Bollinger, which is currently how universities use race-conscious admissions.

Harvard and UNC have argued that race is one of the many factors that the universities consider in admissions, along with socioeconomic status and extracurricular activities, and they make admission decisions within the guidelines set by Grutter.

Both suits were filed by a group called Students for Fair Admissions, which is funded by Edward Blum, a conservative legal activist who has launched multiple lawsuits over what he sees as racial preferences in school admissions.

For the Harvard case, the group alleges that Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act because Asian American applicants are less likely to be admitted compared to similarly qualified Black, Latino or Indigenous applicants. Title VI bars institutions that receive federal funding from discrimination on the basis of race.

The UNC case argues that because the university takes into consideration race in its admissions process, it violates the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.

Federal courts rejected Students for Fair Admissions’ arguments and sided with the universities.

Affirmative action  stemmed  from the civil rights movement of the 1960s, when President Lyndon B. Johnson issued an executive order barring discrimination in the workplace based on race, religion — and later gender — by those entities that received federal contracts and subcontracts.

There are nine states that have banned race-based affirmative action from being implemented in public institutions: Florida, California, Michigan, Nebraska, Arizona, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Idaho. Washington state rescinded its ban on affirmative action in 2022.

‘ My heart breaks’ 

Current and former lawmakers and leaders released statements and posted on social media their reactions to the decision.

Less than an hour after the decision, former President Barack Obama, the nation’s first Black leader to hold the office, and former first lady Michelle Obama released statements that included links to scholarship funds and organizations focused on college access for minority students.

“So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level,” Michelle Obama said.

“So today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who’s wondering what their future holds — and what kinds of chances will be open to them. And while I know the strength and grit that lies inside kids who have always had to sweat a little more to climb the same ladders, I hope and I pray that the rest of us are willing to sweat a little, too,” she continued.

Former President Obama said affirmative action “wasn’t perfect.”

“But it allowed generations of students like Michelle and me to prove we belonged. Now it’s up to all of us to give young people the opportunities they deserve  —  and help students everywhere benefit from new perspectives,” he said.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer of New York called the decision “misguided” and said it “has put a giant roadblock in our country’s march toward racial justice.”

“The consequences of this decision will be felt immediately and across the country, as students of color will face an admission cycle next year with fewer opportunities to attend the same colleges and universities than their parents and older siblings. These negative consequences could continue for generations, as the historic harms of exclusion and discrimination in education and society are exacerbated,” Schumer said in a statement.

Former South Carolina governor and 2024 GOP presidential candidate Nikki Haley hailed the decision.

“The world admires America because we value freedom and opportunity. The Supreme Court reaffirmed those values today. Picking winners and losers based on race is fundamentally wrong. This decision will help every student — no matter their background — have a better opportunity to achieve the American Dream,” she said in a statement issued immediately following the decision.

Maryland leaders react

Maryland’s Legislative Black Caucus issued a statement condemning the Supreme Court decision and calling on Maryland higher education institutions to act. “Ultimately, higher education is strengthened by students from all walks of life living, learning, and growing together at our colleges and universities. We thrive when we intentionally include the talents and potential of students from all backgrounds,” caucus Chair Jheanelle Wilkins said.

The caucus urged “every Maryland institution to publicly affirm in word and in action their commitment to communities that have been historically and presently harmed by historic segregation and exclusion in higher education, and work within the new legal parameters to realize true inclusion.”

Maryland House Speaker Adrienne A. Jones (D-Baltimore County), the first Black person to hold her position, called the majority opinion “another disheartening blow to our country’s efforts to address the pervasive gaps created by slavery, Jim Crow and segregation.”

“I know first-hand the impact a college education can have on the trajectory of one’s life. Abolishing Affirmative Action will have far reaching implications for Marylanders,” her statement continued. “While this is a profoundly sad day for our country and our state, I have already begun working with Attorney General [Anthony] Brown to look at all our options to mitigate the effects of this extreme decision by the Supreme Court.”

Senate President Bill Ferguson (D-Baltimore) said in a statement Thursday that the legislature has worked with the attorney general’s office to pass other legislation “with race-neutral criteria dealing with issues like procurement and recreational cannabis licensing that accomplishes the same underlying intent of enhancing economic justice.”

“That approach will continue moving forward, as we evaluate further actions the legislature can take to safeguard our State against these radical decisions by the United States Supreme Court,” the statement continued.

Brown said the court’s decision upends decades of legal precedent.

“We must not let that happen. A diverse student body enriches the educational experience for  all  students, creating a vibrant learning environment where students are exposed to different ideas and challenged to think critically,” Brown said. “It helps break down barriers, fostering greater understanding and empathy. It prepares students for an increasingly diverse work force in an increasingly interconnected world.”

Anthony L. Jenkins, president of Coppin State University, one of Maryland’s four HBCUs, said the court’s decision will have wide-ranging short- and long-term effects, “including a chilling effect on campuses where students of color and students from underrepresented backgrounds question whether they belong, are accepted, and are valued.”

But, Jenkins said, the hope is that the ruling “does not deter diverse students from pursuing their educational dreams at any institution of their choice.”

“Their intellect and creativity are important and greatly needed across the entire landscape of higher education. Institutions of higher education should serve as inclusive places where important life-changing issues can be discussed, and solutions can be created by diverse minds. They should not be places where those conversations are silenced,” Jenkins continued.

Officials from the University of Maryland College Park released a statement that said it remains unclear how the “disappointing” decision will affect the school.

But “we have a clear, loud and true message: we will remain a national leader by encouraging and supporting students of all backgrounds as they apply, enroll and graduate from the University of Maryland,” said school president Darryll Pines and provost Jennifer King Rice. “The educational value of campus diversity is one we will not sacrifice.”

Rep. Kweisi Mfume (D-5th) called the court’s decision “shameful.”

“The effects of 200 years of slavery and 100 years of Jim Crow laws cannot be erased or overcome without first attempting to provide educational opportunities to balance the scale of historic discrimination,” Mfume said in a statement. “Today’s destructive court decision will over time energize a whole new generation of young people to now realize that the issue of race and skin color has not gone away, and that unfortunately, it still dominates too many aspects of the American system of higher education.”

Oral arguments

During oral arguments last year , members of the court’s conservative wing, who now make up a 6-3 majority, questioned if it is legal for universities to consider race and for how long such policies should endure, pointing to a 2003 case that predicted that affirmative action would no longer be needed in 25 years.

The case, Grutter vs. Bollinger, allowed the limited use of race to be considered in college admissions, and held that race was merely one of many considerations given in an applicant. The case allowed the University of Michigan Law School to consider race in its admissions process in order to help create a diverse student body.

Justice Clarence Thomas, a conservative and the only Black man on the Supreme Court, pressed lawyers defending the schools’ policies on how diversity benefited education.

“I didn’t go to racially diverse schools but there were educational benefits. And I’d like you to tell me expressly when a parent sends a kid to college that they don’t necessarily send them there to have fun or feel good or anything like that. They send them there to learn physics or chemistry or whatever they’re studying,” Thomas said to Ryan Park, the attorney representing UNC. “So tell me what the educational benefits are to that?”

During oral arguments in October of last year,  supporters of affirmative action rallied outside the Supreme Court.

Danielle E. Gaines and William J. Ford contributed to this report. 

Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. We ask that you edit only for style or to shorten, provide proper attribution and link to our website. AP and Getty images may not be republished. Please see our republishing guidelines for use of any other photos and graphics.

Ariana Figueroa

Ariana covers the nation's capital for States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. Her areas of coverage include politics and policy, lobbying, elections and campaign finance.

Ashley Murray

Ashley Murray covers the nation’s capital as a senior reporter for States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization. Her coverage areas include domestic policy and appropriations.

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A Federal Judge Delivers Another Urgent, Scathing Warning About the Supreme Court

It takes a lot of courage for a lower court judge to criticize the Supreme Court, but Judge Carlton Reeves has long felt a responsibility to speak candidly to the public about threats to their civil rights. In an opinion on Monday, he calls for the abolition of qualified immunity—a noxious legal doctrine that insulates violent and corrupt government officials, especially law enforcement, from accountability. He embedded this call to action in a broader critique of the Supreme Court’s selective application of precedent—with a focus on the cavalier reversal of Roe v. Wade —as well as its pernicious distrust of democracy. Reeves’ opinion warns all who wish to listen that a broad array of our constitutional liberties are in serious and imminent jeopardy.

A Barack Obama appointee, Reeves sits on a U.S. District Court in Mississippi. His latest opinion was sparked by facts that he sees all too often and has written about before : the egregious violation of a criminal suspect’s constitutional rights as an innocent person wrongly charged with a crime. It began when detective Jacquelyn Thomas of Jackson, Mississippi, accused Desmond Green of murder. The detective’s only evidence was a statement made by Green’s acquaintance, Samuel Jennings—after Jennings was arrested for burglary and grand larceny, and while he was under the influence of meth. Thomas allegedly encouraged Jennings to select Green’s picture out of a photo lineup after he identified someone else as the killer. Allegedly, she also misled the grand jury to secure an indictment, concealing Jennings’ drug abuse as well as the many inconsistencies and inaccuracies in his statement.

Jennings later recanted, admitting that, in his meth-addled state, he’d provided a bogus tip. A judge finally dismissed the charges. By that point, Green had spent 22 months in jail, serving pretrial detention. The facility was violent. The food was moldy. He slept on the floor. His cell was infested with snakes and vermin.

Green then sued Thomas, accusing her of malicious prosecution in violation of the Constitution . Thomas promptly asserted qualified immunity to defeat the lawsuit. This doctrine protects government officials from liability unless they run afoul of “clearly established” law. In other words, there must be an earlier case on the books with similar, “particularized” facts that explicitly bars the official’s actions. If there is no near-identical precedent that unambiguously prohibits those acts, qualified immunity kicks in, the lawsuit is tossed out, and the case never even reaches a jury.

This shield has allowed a repulsive amount of wrongdoing by police and prosecutors to go totally unpunished. Cops are permitted to brutally beat, murder , steal from , and conspire against innocent people because the rights they violate are, ostensibly, not “clearly established.” Courts regularly apply the doctrine when there is a tiny discrepancy between a previous case and the facts at hand as an excuse to let the officer off scot-free. And over the past few decades, SCOTUS itself has expanded qualified immunity to new extremes . The result, as Reeves wrote, is “a perpetuation of racial inequality”: Black Americans experience more violations of their civil rights than any other class, yet qualified immunity denies them a remedy in even the most appalling circumstances.

Here, though, Reeves refused to let the doctrine devour the Constitution. He concluded that there is sufficient on-point precedent to show that Thomas’ malicious prosecution, if proved, violated Green’s “clearly established” rights. So the case may go to trial. That, however, was not the end of his analysis—because, as he pointed out, the concept of qualified immunity is unlawful, unworkable, and indefensible.

The first problem is that judges made up the doctrine as a special favor to other employees of the government. Congress, as Reeves explained, gave individuals the power to sue state officials in federal court through the Ku Klux Klan Act of 1871, enacted after the Civil War so newly freed Black Americans could sue racist and abusive local police. Congress did not establish anything like “qualified immunity” in the statute. Rather, the Supreme Court invented the doctrine in 1967 , purporting to protect cops who commit illegal arrests in “good faith,” and imposed it unilaterally on the nation. It then crept, kudzu-like , into other areas of law.

“The People never enshrined qualified immunity in the Constitution,” Reeves wrote. “Our representatives in Congress never put it into the statute or voted for it. No President signed it into law. If anything, it represents a kind of ‘trickle-down’ democratic legitimacy.” In recent years, the Supreme Court has not bothered to account for qualified immunity’s origins, but rather maintains it on the basis of respect for precedent: It exists already, so it might as well keep existing.

And here is where Reeves goes for the jugular: The Supreme Court has tossed out far more defensible and entrenched precedent on the basis of far feebler excuses. How can it justify keeping qualified immunity around while recklessly destabilizing vast areas of settled law it doesn’t like?

SCOTUS has suggested that law enforcement officers have come to rely on qualified immunity, creating a “reliance interest” that counsels keeping the doctrine. But when the court overruled Roe in 2022’s Dobbs decision, Reeves wrote, the majority rejected that “kind of vague, ‘generalized assertion about the national psyche.’ ” Instead, Reeves wrote, the justices “thought voters should resolve reliance interests, not judges.” He then repurposed Dobbs ’ most notorious lines : “After all, just like women, law enforcement officers and their unions ‘are not without electoral or political power.’ ” Law enforcement officers, like women, can “affect the legislative process by influencing public opinion, lobbying legislators, voting, and running for office.” If courts can’t protect women’s bodily autonomy, he asked, why should they do the bidding of police unions?

Dobbs , Reeves went on, “also reflects the Supreme Court’s desire to remove itself from the center of a hot-button issue and return it to the electoral process.” Police reform, like abortion, is undoubtedly a “controversy on issues of life and death, where passions run high.” Yet even after Dobbs , SCOTUS “has not yet seen fit to return this contested issue to the democratic process,” Reeves opined. “It is not clear why.” After all, “the current court is certainly not shy about overturning precedent.” And the list of cases on the chopping block “seems to grow every year.” Teachers’ unions and racial minorities have watched the court gut precedent that shielded them for decades. Why should cops get favored treatment? Merely because of SCOTUS’ “policy-based choice” to “privilege government officials over all others.”

Reeves has a complex history with reproductive rights. He was the district court judge who struck down the Mississippi law that the Supreme Court later upheld in Dobbs when overruling Roe . His emphatic opinion famously accused the Mississippi Legislature of misogynistic “gaslighting,” analogizing the state’s defiance of Roe to its earlier defiance of Brown v. Board of Education . It’s evident that, to Reeves, the Supreme Court’s embrace of democracy in Dobbs rings hollow alongside its rejection of democracy in so many other areas, including the Second Amendment. (In a pointed footnote, he called out the court for treating the right to bear arms as a uniquely absolute, unlimited freedom —while greenlighting the erosion of other liberties that it values less.)

The judge folds together these rather scathing observations by reminding us that the Supreme Court’s creation and expansion of qualified immunity is, itself, a rejection of democracy. The Framers, after all, envisioned jury trials as a bulwark of democratic power, a check by “We the People” on government abuse. It was, Reeves wrote, designed to be exercised “one dispute at a time, day after day, rather than on fixed election days.” Unfortunately, an arrogant “judicial supremacy has too-often deprived the people of their proper role” in deciding whether public officials should be liable for their unconstitutional acts. Qualified immunity “reflects a deep distrust of ordinary people” in direct conflict with the Constitution. “In the same way we trust the collective judgment of voters in elections, we must trust the judgment of jurors in deciding cases,” Reeves wrote. They can resolve “tensions and contradictions case by case, as the evidence dictates.” All judges must do “is tell jurors the truth.”

Will the Supreme Court listen? The conservative justices seem disinclined to reevaluate their cynical, selective concerns about precedent and democracy. But with this opinion, Reeves has given the public yet another reason to question these justices’ increasingly dubious wisdom and integrity. Just as importantly, other judges may take note of Monday’s critique and follow Reeves’ suggestion of narrowing qualified immunity wherever possible. They might even join him in calling for its eradication, forcing SCOTUS to either stand by its handiwork or reevaluate it. The judge’s simple suggestion boils down to this: If we’re going to do democracy, let’s actually do democracy—not whatever partisan, half-baked substitute this Supreme Court is trying to pass off to the people.

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International Criminal Court Prosecutor Requests Warrants for Netanyahu and Hamas Leaders

While the request must be approved by the court’s judges, the announcement is a harsh rebuke of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel and his war strategy in Gaza.

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By Patrick Kingsley and Matthew Mpoke Bigg

Patrick Kingsley reported from Jerusalem, and Matthew Mpoke Bigg from London.

The chief prosecutor at the world’s top criminal court on Monday announced that he was seeking arrest warrants for the leaders of both Israel and Hamas on charges of crimes against humanity, a strong rebuke that equated Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel with his Hamas counterpart, Yahya Sinwar, and compounded the growing international alarm at Israel’s conduct in Gaza.

In a statement , Karim Khan, the chief prosecutor, said that after investigating Hamas’s Oct. 7 attack on Israel and Israel’s counterattack on Gaza he had decided to apply for arrest warrants for Mr. Sinwar, Hamas’s leader within Gaza; Muhammad Deif, Hamas’s military leader; and Ismail Haniyeh, the movement’s Qatar-based political leader. Mr. Khan also said he was requesting warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and for Israel’s defense minister, Yoav Gallant.

While Mr. Khan’s request must still be approved by judges from the court, the announcement forms one of the harshest rebukes of Israel’s strategy in its seven-month campaign against Hamas that has killed tens of thousands of Gazan civilians. It also heightens scrutiny of Hamas’s actions at the start of the war in October, when Hamas fighters led a raid that killed more than 1,000 people and abducted hundreds more.

“Today we once again underline that international law and the laws of armed conflict apply to all,” Mr. Khan said in his statement. “No foot soldier, no commander, no civilian leader — no one — can act with impunity.”

For now, the announcement is largely symbolic. Israel is not a member of the court and does not recognize its jurisdiction in Israel or Gaza, meaning that Israeli leaders would face no risk of arrest at home.

Judges can also take months to uphold requests for arrest warrants. But if they do issue warrants, those named could be arrested if they travel to one of the court’s 124 member nations , which include most European countries but not the United States.

Mr. Khan’s decision to simultaneously pursue Israeli and Palestinian leaders was criticized by Israeli government ministers and Hamas alike. Both sides questioned why their allies had been targeted instead of their enemies alone.

“How dare you compare the monsters of Hamas to the soldiers of the Israeli Army, the world’s most moral military?” Mr. Netanyahu asked in a statement on Monday evening.

Similarly, Hamas said in a statement that it “strongly denounces” the attempt to “equate the victim with the executioner by issuing arrest warrants against a number of Palestinian resistance leaders.”

The decision raised difficult questions for Israel’s allies who are members of the court and could be required to arrest Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant if the warrants are issued and the men subsequently travel to their territories. Qatar, which hosts several Hamas leaders including Mr. Haniyeh, is not a member of the court.

President Biden condemned the move, saying in a statement that, “Whatever this prosecutor might imply, there is no equivalence — none — between Israel and Hamas.”

Mr. Khan’s statement said that he had “reasonable grounds to believe” that Mr. Sinwar, Mr. Deif and Mr. Haniyeh were responsible for “war crimes and crimes against humanity” — including “the killing of hundreds of Israeli civilians in attacks perpetrated by Hamas.”

Mr. Khan said he sought their arrest both for the killing of civilians and the capture of hostages during the Oct. 7 attack, as well as on charges of maltreatment of and sexual violence against hostages during their captivity in Gaza.

The requests for warrants were based on interviews with survivors, review of documentary evidence including video and photographs, and field visits by Mr. Khan and his team. Mr. Khan visited the Israeli-occupied West Bank and a border crossing between Egypt and Gaza, but did not enter Gaza itself. He also went to some of the sites attacked in Israel during the Hamas-led raid, interviewing victims and witnesses.

Regarding Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, the prosecutor said he believed the Israeli leaders bore criminal responsibility for war crimes and crimes against humanity, including using starvation as a weapon of war and “intentionally directing attacks against a civilian population.”

While Mr. Khan said that Israel was allowed to protect its citizens, he said that its forces had failed to uphold international law during its devastating response.

“Notwithstanding any military goals they may have, the means Israel chose to achieve them in Gaza — namely, intentionally causing death, starvation, great suffering, and serious injury to body or health of the civilian population — are criminal,” Mr. Khan wrote.

Mr. Khan also implicitly criticized Israel’s judicial system, saying that the I.C.C. is forced to act only when a country’s prosecutors fail to hold its own citizens to account.

The court defers to “national authorities only when they engage in independent and impartial judicial processes that do not shield suspects and are not a sham,” Mr. Khan said.

But Antony J. Blinken, the U.S. secretary of state, said that Mr. Khan had not given Israel enough time to show that its own prosecutors were investigating the case. Mr. Blinken said that Mr. Khan’s aides had called off a visit to Israel on Monday to address that very question, suggesting that they were not serious about finding out the answer.

Mr. Khan’s office said that it “has not received any information that has demonstrated genuine action at the domestic level to address the crimes alleged or the individuals under investigation.”

Within the Israeli government, which had been split over disagreements about war strategy in recent days, the announcement prompted ministers to set aside their differences and adopt a united front.

Benny Gantz, a minister in Israel’s war cabinet and a critic of Mr. Netanyahu, accused the prosecutor of “moral blindness” in drawing an equivalence between the leaders of Israel and Hamas. Mr. Gantz’s response came less than two days after he threatened to quit Mr. Netanyahu’s cabinet for failing to set in motion a plan for the governance of postwar Gaza.

Relatives of Israeli hostages praised the push to hold Hamas’s leaders to account, but criticized the decision to target both Israeli politicians and Hamas at the same time.

The Hostage Families Forum, an alliance representing hostages’ relatives and supporters, said it “applauds the issuance of warrants against senior Hamas officials” but was “not comfortable with the equivalence drawn between Israel’s leadership and the terrorists of Hamas.”

Palestinians in Gaza had the inverse reaction, questioning why Palestinian leaders had been targeted instead of only Israelis.

Jaber Yahia, 50, a teacher in central Gaza, said by telephone that he was “relieved” to hear of the requests for warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant. “Then I found out there were other warrants against Haniyeh, Sinwar and Deif. Why do they insist on putting the killers and victims in the same category?”

Appearing to anticipate such criticism from both sides, Mr. Khan wrote in his statement of the need to apply the law equally to all sides in a conflict.

“If we do not demonstrate our willingness to apply the law equally, if it is seen as being applied selectively, we will be creating the conditions for its collapse,” Mr. Khan said.

In recent weeks, Israeli and Western officials had predicted privately and publicly that leaders from Israel and Hamas could soon face prosecution.

In late April, Mr. Netanyahu said on social media that the country “will never accept any attempt by the I.C.C. to undermine its inherent right of self-defense.”

The I.C.C. is the world’s only permanent international court with the power to prosecute individuals accused of war crimes, genocide and crimes against humanity. It is separate from the International Court of Justice, another international tribunal in The Hague, which deals with disputes between states. The I.C.J. is currently assessing a claim, brought by South Africa, that Israel is conducting a genocide in Gaza , an accusation that Israel strongly denies.

Mr. Biden, too, rejects that idea, stating flatly on Monday during a celebration of Jewish Heritage Month in the Rose Garden at the White House that Israel’s military assault in Gaza in the wake of the October attacks led by Hamas “is not genocide.”

“We reject that,” he said, telling an audience of Jewish leaders and activists that Americans “stand with Israel.”

The I.C.C. cannot try defendants in absentia , but its warrants can make international travel difficult. The court has no police force, relying instead on its members to make arrests. An arrested suspect is typically transferred to The Hague to appear before the court.

Aid experts have said the hunger crisis in Gaza is a direct result of the war as well as Israel’s near-complete siege of the territory and its strikes on aid workers.

The Israeli military said it had safely coordinated thousands of aid operations and that it was investigating any “exceptional events that take place during war.”

More generally, Israel has denied placing limits on humanitarian aid entering the territory. It says Israeli officials have done all they can to bring food to the territory and that it is the fault of aid organizations for failing to adequately distribute food after the aid has crossed the border.

Analysts have also cited Israel’s failure to allow an alternative Palestinian leadership to take over in the territory, leading to a power vacuum and the breakdown of law and order, making it even harder to distribute food.

The food situation in Gaza was considered stable before the war began, despite a 16-year blockade on the territory instigated by Israel and Egypt. But food supplies fell sharply in October, when Israel cut off all aid deliveries for the two weeks that followed the Hamas attack. At that time. Mr. Gallant promised a “total siege” on the territory, describing Israel’s attackers as “human animals” and promising “no electricity, no food, no fuel” for Gaza.

Since reopening some aid routes in late October, Israeli officials have still imposed rigorous checks on aid going into Gaza, which is home to around 2.2 million people, and the prospect of famine has been looming for months.

Mr. Khan cited several of these restrictions as justification for issuing arrest warrants for Mr. Netanyahu and Mr. Gallant, saying that they were part of “a widespread and systematic attack against the Palestinian civilian population.”

By focusing on decisions by Israeli politicians, Mr. Khan avoided making detailed accusations about Israel’s military leadership and did not discuss the actions of its Air Force or ground forces.

Reporting was contributed by Gabby Sobelman in Rehovot, Israel; Johnatan Reiss in Tel Aviv; Abu Bakr Bashir in London; Marlise Simons in Paris; and Michael D. Shear in Washington.

Patrick Kingsley is The Times’s Jerusalem bureau chief, leading coverage of Israel, Gaza and the West Bank. More about Patrick Kingsley

Matthew Mpoke Bigg is a London-based reporter on the Live team at The Times, which covers breaking and developing news. More about Matthew Mpoke Bigg