One year after they overturned the Roe v. Wade protection for abortion rights, the same six members of the U.S. Supreme Court have banned affirmative action — the explicit use of race as a factor in college admissions.
Designed to address centuries of inequality in education, affirmative action had been a feature of the past several decades and was upheld by multiple Supreme Court rulings over that period. Now, the court has denounced the practice as a form of racial discrimination that violates the 14th Amendment, which was itself enacted to enfranchise the formerly enslaved.
