Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/2

Syllabus

the full committee’s votes is tentatively accepted for admission. At the end of this process, the racial composition of the tentative applicant pool is disclosed to the committee. The last stage of Harvard’s admissions process, called the “lop,” winnows the list of tentatively admitted students to arrive at the final class. Applicants that Harvard considers cutting at this stage are placed on the “lop list,” which contains only four pieces of information: legacy status, recruited athlete status, financial aid eligibility, and race. In the Harvard admissions process, “race is a determinative tip for” a significant percentage “of all admitted African American and Hispanic applicants.”

UNC has a similar admissions process. Every application is reviewed first by an admissions office reader, who assigns a numerical rating to each of several categories. Readers are required to consider the applicant’s race as a factor in their review. Readers then make a written recommendation on each assigned application, and they may provide an applicant a substantial “plus” depending on the applicant’s race. At this stage, most recommendations are provisionally final. A committee of experienced staff members then conducts a “school group review” of every initial decision made by a reader and either approves or rejects the recommendation. In making those decisions, the committee may consider the applicant’s race.

Petitioner, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), is a nonprofit organization whose stated purpose is “to defend human and civil rights secured by law, including the right of individuals to equal protection under the law.” SFFA filed separate lawsuits against Harvard and UNC, arguing that their race-based admissions programs violate, respectively, Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. After separate bench trials, both admissions programs were found permissible under the Equal Protection Clause and this Court’s precedents. In the Harvard case, the First Circuit affirmed, and this Court granted certiorari. In the UNC case, this Court granted certiorari before judgment.

Held: Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. Pp. 6–40.

(a) Because SFFA complies with the standing requirements for organizational plaintiffs articulated by this Court in Hunt v. Washington State Apple Advertising Comm’n, 432 U. S. 333, SFFA’s obligations under Article III are satisfied, and this Court has jurisdiction to consider the merits of SFFA’s claims.

The Court rejects UNC’s argument that SFFA lacks standing because it is not a “genuine” membership organization. An organizational plaintiff can satisfy Article III jurisdiction in two ways, one of which is to assert “standing solely as the representative of its mem-