WASHINGTON — In another major reversal, the Supreme Court on Thursday struck down affirmative action policies at colleges and universities that use race as a factor in deciding who is admitted.
In a pair of decisions, the six conservative justices ruled that Harvard, the nation's oldest private college, and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, the oldest state university, were illegally discriminating based on race and violating the 14th Amendment of the Constitution.
"Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it," wrote Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. in his majority decision. "And the Equal Protection Clause, we have accordingly held, applies 'without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality' — it is 'universal in [its] application.'"
