Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/148

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Cite as: 600 U. S. ____ (2023)

9

Sotomayor, J., dissenting

designed “to afford discriminating protection to colored persons,” and its “distinction of race and color … operate[s] in favor of the colored and against the white race”). Again, Congress overrode his veto. Cong. Globe 1861. In fact, Congress reenacted race-conscious language in the Civil Rights Act of 1870, two years after ratification of the Fourteenth Amendment, see Act of May 31, 1870, §16, 16 Stat. 144, where it remains today, see 42 U. S. C. §§1981(a) and 1982 (Rev. Stat. §§1972, 1978).

Congress similarly appropriated federal dollars explicitly and solely for the benefit of racial minorities. For example, it appropriated money for “ ‘the relief of destitute colored women and children,’ ” without regard to prior enslavement. Act of July 28, 1866, 14 Stat. 317. Several times during and after the passage of the Fourteenth Amendment, Congress also made special appropriations and adopted special protections for the bounty and prize money owed to “colored soldiers and sailors” of the Union Army. 14 Stat. 357, Res. No. 46, June 15, 1866; Act of Mar. 3, 1869, ch. 122, 15 Stat. 301; Act of Mar. 3, 1873, 17 Stat. 528. In doing so, it rebuffed objections to these measures as “class legislation” “applicable to colored people and not … to the white people.” Cong. Globe, 40th Cong., 1st Sess., 79 (1867) (statement of Sen. Grimes). This history makes it “inconceivable” that race-conscious college admissions are unconstitutional. Bakke, 438 U. S., at 398 (opinion of Marshall, J.).^[1]

↑ By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the States in 1868, “education had become a right of state citizenship in the constitution of every readmitted state,” including in North Carolina. D. Black, The Fundamental Right to Education, 94 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1059, 1089 (2019); see also Brief for Black Women Scholars as Amici Curiae 9 (“The herculean efforts of Black reformers, activists, and lawmakers during the Reconstruction Era forever transformed State constitutional law; today, thanks to the impact of their work, every State constitution contains language guaranteeing the right to public education”).

[1] By the time the Fourteenth Amendment was ratified by the States in 1868, “education had become a right of state citizenship in the constitution of every readmitted state,” including in North Carolina. D. Black, The Fundamental Right to Education, 94 Notre Dame L. Rev. 1059, 1089 (2019); see also Brief for Black Women Scholars as Amici Curiae 9 (“The herculean efforts of Black reformers, activists, and lawmakers during the Reconstruction Era forever transformed State constitutional law; today, thanks to the impact of their work, every State constitution contains language guaranteeing the right to public education”).

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