Justices of the U.S. Supreme Court showed deep divides over race-conscious university admissions while questioning lawyers in cases that could transform college campuses and overturn decades-old precedents.
The court’s conservative majority signaled opposition to allowing schools to take race into account going forward, expressing concern that there would never be a clear end to the consideration of race if existing policies were allowed to continue.
Liberal Justices Sonia Sotomayor, Elena Kagan and Ketanji Brown Jackson pressed a lawyer representing a group suing the University of North Carolina and Harvard College. They questioned his assertion that universities are using race as the determinative factor in admissions and asked whether it would be a problem if Black and Hispanic admissions plunged.
