Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/36

28 meaningfully change if race-based admissions were abandoned. And they acknowledge that race is determinative for at least some—if not many—of the students they admit. See, e.g., Tr. of Oral Arg. in No. 20–1199, at 67; 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 633. How else but “negative” can race be described if, in its absence, members of some racial groups would be admitted in greater numbers than they otherwise would have been? The “[e]qual protection of the laws is not achieved through indiscriminate imposition of inequalities.” Shelley, 334 U. S., at 22.

Respondents’ admissions programs are infirm for a second reason as well. We have long held that universities may not operate their admissions programs on the “belief that minority students always (or even consistently) express some characteristic minority viewpoint on any issue.” Grutter, 539 U. S., at 333 (internal quotation marks omitted). That requirement is found throughout our Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence more generally. See, e.g., Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U. S. 291, 308 (2014) (plurality opinion) (“In cautioning against ‘impermissible racial stereotypes,’ this Court has rejected the assumption that ‘members of the same racial group—regardless of their age, education, economic status, or the community in which they live—think alike….’ ” (quoting Shaw v. Reno, 509 U. S.