College affirmative action ban years in the making

+ what's next for student debt; Minneapolis police report US Edition - Today's top story: A 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action planted the seeds of its overturning, as justices then and now thought racism an easily solved problem [View in browser]( US Edition | 6 July 2023 [The Conversation] [The Conversation]( Over the past 50 years, the U.S. Supreme Court has ruled in several cases that affirmative action programs that diversify college campuses are of vital national interest. That changed on June 29, 2023, when the court’s conservative majority ruled against such programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. As race and equity legal scholar Kenneth Shropshire wrote, the court’s shift started in 2003 in the Grutter v. Bollinger case, in which a white student challenged the use of race at the University of Michigan Law School. In her majority opinion in that case, Associate Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote that “race-conscious admissions policies must be limited in time,” adding that the “Court expects that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” But Shropshire explained that that O'Connor’s deadline was one of desire and not reality. “The vestiges of [past discrimination and the unfortunate existence of ongoing discrimination continue](,” Shropshire wrote. “No deadline has made these wrongs and their impact disappear.” Howard Manly Race + Equity Editor The Supreme Court issued a decision on June 29, 2023, that ends affirmative action in college admissions. Drew Angerer/Getty Images [A 2003 Supreme Court decision upholding affirmative action planted the seeds of its overturning, as justices then and now thought racism an easily solved problem]( Kenneth L. Shropshire, University of Pennsylvania The Supreme Court’s decision to eliminate affirmative action programs sent shock waves across the US and is expected to impact racial diversity throughout society. People in the Brooklyn borough of New York City protest police violence against Black women on Sept. 5, 2020. Erik McGregor/LightRocket via Getty Images [Police treatment in black and white – report on Minneapolis policing is the latest reminder of systemic racial disparities]( Rashad Shabazz, Arizona State University At a time when Americans celebrated their nation’s independence, it’s clear not every American enjoys the same constitutional rights. The Supreme Court rejected President Joe Biden’s plan to eliminate $430 billion in student loan debt. 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