Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/175

36 The Court concludes that Harvard’s and UNC’s policies are unconstitutional because they serve objectives that are insufficiently measurable, employ racial categories that are imprecise and overbroad, rely on racial stereotypes and disadvantage nonminority groups, and do not have an end point. , . In reaching this conclusion, the Court claims those supposed issues with respondents’ programs render the programs insufficiently “narrow” under the strict scrutiny framework that the Court’s precedents command. In reality, however, “the Court today cuts through the kudzu” and overrules its “higher-education precedents” following Bakke. (, concurring).

There is no better evidence that the Court is overruling the Court’s precedents than those precedents themselves. “Every one of the arguments made by the majority can be found in the dissenting opinions filed in [the] cases” the majority now overrules. Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U. S. 808, 846 (1991) (Marshall, J., dissenting); see, e.g., Grutter, 539 U. S., at 354 (, concurring in part and dissenting in part) (“Unlike the majority, I seek to define with precision the interest being asserted”); Fisher II, 579 U. S., at 389 (, dissenting) (race-conscious admissions