Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/206

Rh of Members of Congress have a college degree. So do most business leaders. Indeed, many state and local leaders in North Carolina attended college in the UNC system. See Southern Governors Brief 8. More than half of judges on the North Carolina Supreme Court and Court of Appeals graduated from the UNC system, for example, and nearly a third of the Governor’s cabinet attended UNC. Ibid. A less diverse pipeline to these top jobs accumulates wealth and power unequally across racial lines, exacerbating racial disparities in a society that already dispenses prestige and privilege based on race.

The Court ignores the dangerous consequences of an America where its leadership does not reflect the diversity of the People. A system of government that visibly lacks a path to leadership open to every race cannot withstand scrutiny “in the eyes of the citizenry.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 332. “[G]ross disparity in representation” leads the public to wonder whether they can ever belong in our Nation’s institutions, including this one, and whether those institutions work for them. Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 21–707, p. 171 (“The Court is going to hear from 27 advocates in this sitting of the oral argument calendar, and two are women, even though women today are 50 percent or more of law school graduates. And I think it would be reasonable for a woman to look at that and wonder, is that a path that’s open to me, to be a Supreme Court advocate?” (remarks of Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar)).