Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/118

12 recounted above. See, e.g., 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 146 (“if at some point in the admissions process it appears that a group is notably underrepresented or has suffered a dramatic drop off relative to the prior year, the [committee] may decide to give additional attention to applications from students within that group”); cf. (opinion for the Court).

Throughout this litigation, the parties have spent less time contesting these facts than debating other matters.

For example, the parties debate how much of a role race plays in admissions at Harvard and UNC. Both schools insist that they consider race as just one of many factors when making admissions decisions in their self-described “holistic” review of each applicant. SFFA responds with trial evidence showing that, whatever label the universities use to describe their processes, they intentionally consult race and, by design, their race-based tips and plusses benefit applicants of certain groups to the detriment of others. See Brief for Petitioner 20–35, 40–45.

The parties also debate the reasons both schools consult race. SFFA observes that, in the 1920s, Harvard began moving away from “test scores” and toward “plac[ing] greater emphasis on character, fitness, and other subjective criteria.” Id., at 12–13 (internal quotation marks omitted). Harvard made this move, SFFA asserts, because President A. Lawrence Lowell and other university leaders had become “alarmed by the growing number of Jewish students who were testing in,” and they sought some way to cap the number of Jewish students without “ ‘stat[ing] frankly’ ” that they were “ ‘directly excluding all [Jews] beyond a certain percentage.’ ” Id., at 12; see also 3 App. in No. 20–1199, pp. 1131–1133. SFFA contends that Harvard’s current “holistic” approach to admissions works similarly to disguise