Kavanaugh, J., concurring
education.[1]
Justice Sotomayor, Justice Kagan, and Justice Jackson disagree with the Court’s decision. I respect their views. They thoroughly recount the horrific history of slavery and Jim Crow in America, cf. Bakke, 438 U. S., at 395–402 (opinion of Marshall, J.), as well as the continuing effects of that history on African Americans today. And they are of course correct that for the last five decades, Bakke and Grutter have allowed narrowly tailored race-based affirmative action in higher education.
But I respectfully part ways with my dissenting colleagues on the question of whether, under this Court’s precedents, race-based affirmative action in higher education may extend indefinitely into the future. The dissents suggest that the answer is yes. But this Court’s precedents make clear that the answer is no. See Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342–343; Dowell, 498 U. S., at 247–248; Croson, 488 U. S., at 510 (plurality opinion of O’Connor, J.).
To reiterate: For about 50 years, many institutions of higher education have employed race-based affirmative action programs. In the abstract, it might have been debatable how long those race-based admissions programs could continue under the “temporary matter”/“limited in time” equal protection principle recognized and applied by this Court. Grutter, 539 U. S., at 342 (internal quotation marks omitted); cf. Dowell, 498 U. S., at 247–248. But in 2003, the Grutter Court applied that temporal equal
- ↑ The Court’s decision will first apply to the admissions process for the college class of 2028, which is the next class to be admitted. Some might have debated how to calculate Grutter’s 25-year period—whether it ends with admissions for the college class of 2028 or instead for the college class of 2032. But neither Harvard nor North Carolina argued that Grutter’s 25-year period ends with the class of 2032 rather than the class of 2028. Indeed, notwithstanding the 25-year limit set forth in Grutter, neither university embraced any temporal limit on race-based affirmative action in higher education, or identified any end date for its continued use of race in admissions. Ante, at 30–34.
