The Supreme Court’s affirmative action opinion rejects the use of race as an admissions factor in colleges and universities.

But it doesn’t go close to giving applicants extra attention if they’ve faced bias, discrimination or hardship.

It means efforts to diversify at many colleges and universities will have to change and the admissions offices will have to rely on what is often described as a “race-neutral” policy that focuses on the hardships and experiences of individual applicants.

Here are some key quotes from Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr.’s opinion. and the dissenting opinions of Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson:

roberts:

“The whole point of the Equal Protection Clause is that treating someone differently because of the color of their skin is not the same as treating them differently because they’re from a city or a suburb, or because they play the violin badly or well.”

That means “race should never be used as a ‘negative’ and it should not act as a stereotype… Our cases have stressed that an individual’s race should never be used against them in the admissions process.”

Harvard and UNC’s admissions policies may have been “well-intentioned and executed in good faith.”

But

they use race “as a stereotype” to favor some students over others.

Admissions officers may consider an individual

‘s

the student’s full story, even if it includes their race, he said.

“Nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race has affected his or her life, whether through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise. … An advantage to a student who, for example, overcame racial discrimination, should be linked to that student’s courage and determination Or an advantage to a student whose heritage or culture motivated him or her to take on a leadership role or achieve a particular goal should be linked to that student’s unique ability to contribute to the university. In other words, the student should be treated on the basis of his or her experiences as an individual, not on the basis of race.”

Many universities have not focused too much on race, he said.

“They have wrongly concluded that the touchstone of an individual’s identity is not the best challenges, skills accumulated or lessons learned, but the color of their skin. Our constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.”

Sotomyor:

“Today this court ignores decades of precedent and imposes on the country a superficial rule of race blindness. The devastating impact of this decision cannot be overemphasized. The majority view of race neutrality will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will continue to exist.” as long as it’s ignored.”

“This supposed acknowledgment that universities can take race into account in interview essays in some situations is nothing more than an attempt to put lipstick on a pig. The court ruling limits the ability of universities to use race in any form. by carefully expunging respondents’ alleged diversity interests.”

Jackson:

“Race-based differences the size of a Gulf exist with regard to the health, wealth and well-being of American citizens. They originated in the distant past, but have been indisputably passed down through the generations to this day gaps persist is a moment when this great country fails to realize one of its fundamental principles, the ‘self-evident’ truth that we are all created equal.”

“Our country has never been colorblind. Given America’s long history of state-sponsored race-based preferences, to say that someone is now a victim when a university considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally favored its applicants acknowledges it is not the well-documented ‘intergenerational transmission of inequality’ that still plagues our citizens.”