On January 24, 2022, the United States Supreme Court (the "Supreme Court" or the "Court") granted certiorari in the Students for Fair Admissions, Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College ("SFFA v. Harvard") case. The Court consolidated SFFA v. Harvard with SFFA v. University of North Carolina ("UNC") because both lawsuits are being brought by the SFFA and seek to reverse the Court's 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), upholding narrowly tailored, race-conscious measures to promote diverse student bodies in colleges and universities. The Court has extended the briefing schedule, and merits briefing will be completed this summer, with oral argument early in the October 2022 Term.
Background
The case involving Harvard began in 2014, when SFFA, a nonprofit advocacy organization opposed to affirmative action, brought an action alleging Harvard violated Title VI of the Civil Rights Act ("Title VI") by implementing a race-conscious admissions program that SFFA contended discriminated against Asian-American applicants. In conjunction with this lawsuit, SFFA also brought a similar claim under the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment against UNC, alleging that UNC unfairly uses race to give significant preference to underrepresented minority applicants to the detriment of white and Asian-American applicants. SFFA also claimed that Harvard and UNC ignored viable race-neutral alternatives for achieving a diverse student body. Both cases also directly challenged the Supreme Court's 2003 decision in Grutter, and at least implicitly both prior and subsequent Supreme Court precedents including Regents of University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1878), Fischer v...
