Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/128

22 not alone. See, e.g., Fisher, 579 U. S., at 401–437 (, dissenting); Grutter, 539 U. S., at 346–349 (Scalia, J., joined by, concurring in part and dissenting in part); 1 App. in No. 21–707, pp. 401–402 (testimony from UNC administrator: “[M]y understanding of the term ‘critical mass’ is that it’s a … I’m trying to decide if it’s an analogy or a metaphor[.] I think it’s an analogy. … I’m not even sure we would know what it is.”); 3 App. in No. 20–1199, at 1137–1138 (similar testimony from a Harvard administrator). If the Court’s post-Bakke higher-education precedents ever made sense, they are by now incoherent.

Recognizing as much, the Court today cuts through the kudzu. It ends university exceptionalism and returns this Court to the traditional rule that the Equal Protection Clause forbids the use of race in distinguishing between persons unless strict scrutiny’s demanding standards can be met. In that way, today’s decision wakes the echoes of Justice John Marshall Harlan: “The law regards man as man, and takes no account of his surroundings or of his color when his civil rights as guaranteed by the supreme law of the land are involved.” Plessy v. Ferguson, 163 U. S. 537, 559 (1896) (dissenting opinion).

If Bakke led to errors in interpreting the Equal Protection Clause, its first mistake was to take us there. These cases arise under Title VI and that statute is “more than a simple paraphrasing” of the Equal Protection Clause. 438 U. S., at 416 (opinion of Stevens, J.). Title VI has “independent force, with language and emphasis in addition to that found in the Constitution.” Ibid. That law deserves our respect and its terms provide us with all the direction we need.

Put the two provisions side by side. Title VI says: “No person in the United States shall, on the ground of race, color, or national origin, be excluded from participation in, be denied the benefits of, or be subjected to discrimination