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STUDENTS FOR FAIR ADMISSIONS, INC. v. PRESIDENT AND FELLOWS OF HARVARD COLLEGE

Sotomayor, J., dissenting

1

After more than a century of government policies enforcing racial segregation by law, society remains highly segregated. About half of all Latino and Black students attend a racially homogeneous school with at least 75% minority student enrollment.[1] The share of intensely segregated minority schools (i.e., schools that enroll 90% to 100% racial minorities) has sharply increased.[2] To this day, the U. S. Department of Justice continues to enter into desegregation decrees with schools that have failed to “eliminat[e] the vestiges of de jure segregation.”[3]

Moreover, underrepresented minority students are more likely to live in poverty and attend schools with a high concentration of poverty.[4] When combined with residential segregation and school funding systems that rely heavily on local property taxes, this leads to racial minority students attending schools with fewer resources. See San Antonio Independent School Dist. v. Rodriguez, 411 U. S. 1, 72–86 (1973) (Marshall, J., dissenting) (noting school funding disparities that result from local property taxation).[5] In

  1. ↑ See GAO, Report to the Chairman, Committee on Education and Labor, House of Representatives, K–12 Education: Student Population Has Significantly Diversified, but Many Schools Remain Divided Along Racial, Ethnic, and Economic Lines 13 (GAO–22–104737, June 2022) (hereinafter GAO Report).
  2. ↑ G. Orfield, E. Frankenberg, & J. Ayscue, Harming Our Common Future: America’s Segregated Schools 65 Years After Brown 21 (2019).
  3. ↑ E.g., Bennett v. Madison Cty. Bd. of Ed., No. 5:63–CV–613 (ND Ala., July 5, 2022), ECF Doc. 199, p. 19; id., at 6 (requiring school district to ensure “the participation of black students” in advanced courses).
  4. ↑ GAO Report 6, 13 (noting that 80% of predominantly Black and Latino schools have at least 75% of their students eligible for free or reduced-price lunch—a proxy for poverty).
  5. ↑ See also L. Clark, Barbed Wire Fences: The Structural Violence of Education Law, 89 U. Chi. L. Rev. 499, 502, 512–517 (2022); Albert Shanker Institute, B. Baker, M. DiCarlo, & P. Greene, Segregation and
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