Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the Supreme Court ruling striking down race-based admissions in higher education, but it was the three justices who make the court the most diverse in its 233-year history who marked the stark, embittered battle lines over affirmative action.
It was a moment heavy with history and emotion. Clarence Thomas, the longest serving justice and the court's second Black justice, read a concurring opinion from the bench, pointedly rejecting the validity of using race as the basis for preferential consideration. He was followed by Sonia Sotomayor, its first Latina, whose dissenting opinion took aim at Thomas. Then came Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court's first Black woman, whose written dissent was its own biting, metaphor-laden rebuke.
