Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/135

4 equal opportunity will make it safe to sunset affirmative action.” Id., at 346 (concurring opinion).

In allowing race-based affirmative action in higher education for another generation—and only for another generation—the Court in Grutter took into account competing considerations. The Court recognized the barriers that some minority applicants to universities still faced as of 2003, notwithstanding the progress made since Bakke. See Grutter, 539 U. S., at 343. The Court stressed, however, that “there are serious problems of justice connected with the idea of preference itself.” Id., at 341 (internal quotation marks omitted). And the Court added that a “core purpose of the Fourteenth Amendment was to do away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.” Ibid. (internal quotation marks omitted).

The Grutter Court also emphasized the equal protection principle that racial classifications, even when otherwise permissible, must be a “ ‘temporary matter,’ ” and “must be limited in time.” Id., at 342 (quoting Croson, 488 U. S., at 510 (plurality opinion of O’Connor, J.)). The requirement of a time limit “reflects that racial classifications, however compelling their goals, are potentially so dangerous that they may be employed no more broadly than the interest demands. Enshrining a permanent justification for racial preferences would offend this fundamental equal protection principle.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342.

Importantly, the Grutter Court saw “no reason to exempt race-conscious admissions programs from the requirement that all governmental use of race must have a logical end point.” Ibid. The Court reasoned that the “requirement that all race-conscious admissions programs have a termination point assures all citizens that the deviation from the norm of equal treatment of all racial and ethnic groups is a temporary matter, a measure taken in the service of the goal of equality itself.” Ibid. (internal