Sotomayor, J., dissenting
school case, “learning how to tolerate diverse expressive activities has always been ‘part of learning how to live in a pluralistic society’ ” under our constitutional tradition. Kennedy v. Bremerton School Dist., 597 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (slip op., at 29); cf. Khorrami v. Arizona, 598 U. S. ___, ___ (2022) (Gorsuch, J., dissenting from denial of certiorari) (slip op., at 8) (collecting research showing that larger juries are more likely to be racially diverse and “deliberate longer, recall information better, and pay greater attention to dissenting voices”).
In short, for more than four decades, it has been this Court’s settled law that the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment authorizes a limited use of race in college admissions in service of the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body. From Brown to Fisher, this Court’s cases have sought to equalize educational opportunity in a society structured by racial segregation and to advance the Fourteenth Amendment’s vision of an America where racially integrated schools guarantee students of all races the equal protection of the laws.
D
Today, the Court concludes that indifference to race is the only constitutionally permissible means to achieve racial equality in college admissions. That interpretation of the Fourteenth Amendment is not only contrary to precedent and the entire teachings of our history, see supra, at 2–17, but is also grounded in the illusion that racial inequality was a problem of a different generation. Entrenched racial inequality remains a reality today. That is true for society writ large and, more specifically, for Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC), two institutions with a long history of racial exclusion. Ignoring race will not equalize a society that is racially unequal. What was true in the 1860s, and again in 1954, is true today: Equality requires acknowledgment of inequality.
