Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/141

2 harm inflicted by segregation and the “importance of education to our democratic society.” Id., at 492–495. For 45 years, the Court extended Brown’s transformative legacy to the context of higher education, allowing colleges and universities to consider race in a limited way and for the limited purpose of promoting the important benefits of racial diversity. This limited use of race has helped equalize educational opportunities for all students of every race and background and has improved racial diversity on college campuses. Although progress has been slow and imperfect, race-conscious college admissions policies have advanced the Constitution’s guarantee of equality and have promoted Brown’s vision of a Nation with more inclusive schools.

Today, this Court stands in the way and rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress. It holds that race can no longer be used in a limited way in college admissions to achieve such critical benefits. 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. 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. Because the Court’s opinion is not grounded in law or fact and contravenes the vision of equality embodied in the Fourteenth Amendment, I dissent.

Equal educational opportunity is a prerequisite to achieving racial equality in our Nation. From its founding, the United States was a new experiment in a republican form of government where democratic participation and the capacity to engage in self-rule were vital. At the same time, American society was structured around the profitable institution that was slavery, which the original Constitution