The stakes of the affirmative action cases before the Supreme Court

The Supreme Court is set to rule on two cases challenging race-conscious admissions at colleges.

The Supreme Court is set to rule on a pair of cases that could radically transform how college admissions officers consider race as a factor in admissions, and possibly ban its consideration altogether.

The Court has supported the use of affirmative action in college admissions for nearly 50 years, but with a conservative majority now on the bench, experts warn the court’s longstanding precedent is under threat. Out of nine justices, six are conservative, and with Chief Justice John Roberts’s acknowledgment of his preference for race-neutral admissions policies, a sweeping ban on affirmative action may be on the horizon.

The immediate question in the two lawsuits now pending before the Supreme Court — Students for Fair Admissions v. President & Fellows of Harvard College and Students For Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina — is whether the Court should overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, the 2003 case that held that race may play a limited role in college admissions. (In practice, race often functions as a tiebreaker when universities are deciding among many well-qualified students.) The overarching stakes in these cases, however, are much broader.

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