Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/173

34 Finally, the courts below correctly concluded that Harvard complies with this Court’s repeated admonition that colleges and universities cannot define their diversity interest “as ‘some specified percentage of a particular group merely because of its race or ethnic origin.’ ” Fisher I, 570 U. S., at 311 (quoting Bakke, 438 U. S., at 307). Harvard does not specify its diversity objectives in terms of racial quotas, and “SFFA did not offer expert testimony to support its racial balancing claim.” Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 180, 186–187. Harvard’s statistical evidence, by contrast, showed that the admitted classes across racial groups varied considerably year to year, a pattern “inconsistent with the imposition of a racial quota or racial balancing.” Harvard I, 397 F. Supp. 3d, at 176–177; see Harvard II, 980 F. 3d, at 180, 188–189.

Similarly, Harvard’s use of “one-pagers” containing “a snapshot of various demographic characteristics of Harvard’s applicant pool” during the admissions review process is perfectly consistent with this Court’s precedents. Id., at 170–171, 189. Consultation of these reports, with no “specific number firmly in mind,” “does not transform [Harvard’s] program into a quota.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 335–336. Rather, Harvard’s ongoing review complies with the Court’s command that universities periodically review the necessity of the use of race in their admissions programs. Id., at 342; Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 388.

The Court ignores these careful findings and concludes that Harvard engages in racial balancing because its “focus on numbers is obvious.” Because SFFA failed to offer an expert and to prove its claim below, the majority