Sotomayor, J., dissenting
conscious admissions programs, and achieved successful legal careers, despite having different educational backgrounds than their peers. A discredited hypothesis that the Court previously rejected is no reason to overrule precedent.
Justice Thomas claims that the weight of this evidence is overcome by a single more recent article published in 2016. Ante, at 41, n. 8. That article, however, explains that studies supporting the mismatch hypothesis “yield misleading conclusions,” “overstate the amount of mismatch,” “preclude one from drawing any concrete conclusions,” and rely on methodologically flawed assumptions that “lea[d] to an upwardly-biased estimate of mismatch.” P. Arcidiacono & M. Lovenheim, Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Trade-off, 54 J. Econ. Lit. 3, 17, 20 (2016); see id., at 6 (“economists should be very skeptical of the mismatch hypothesis”). Notably, this refutation of the mismatch theory was coauthored by one of SFFA’s experts, as Justice Thomas seems to recognize.
Citing nothing but his own long-held belief, Justice Thomas also equates affirmative action in higher education with segregation, arguing that “racial preferences in college admissions ‘stamp [Black and Latino students] with a badge of inferiority.’ ” Ante, at 41 (quoting Adarand, 515 U. S., at 241 (Thomas, J., concurring in part and concurring in judgment)). Studies disprove this sentiment, which echoes “tropes of stigma” that “were employed to oppose Reconstruction policies.” A. Onwuachi-Willig, E. Houh, & M. Campbell, Cracking the Egg: Which Came First—Stigma or Affirmative Action? 96 Cal. L. Rev. 1299, 1323 (2008); see, e.g., id., at 1343–1344 (study of seven law schools showing that stigma results from “racial stereotypes that have attached historically to different groups, regardless of affirmative action’s existence”). Indeed, equating state-sponsored segregation with race-conscious admissions policies that promote racial integration trivializes the harms of segregation and offends
