Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/228

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

Jackson, J., dissenting

individual’s resilience and likelihood of enhancing the UNC campus. It also forecasts his potential for entering the wider world upon graduation and making a meaningful contribution to the larger, collective, societal goal that the Equal Protection Clause embodies (its guarantee that the United States of America offers genuinely equal treatment to every person, regardless of race).

Furthermore, and importantly, the fact that UNC’s holistic process ensures a full accounting makes it far from clear that any particular applicant of color will finish ahead of any particular nonminority applicant. For example, as the District Court found, a higher percentage of the most academically excellent in-state Black candidates (as SFFA’s expert defined academic excellence) were denied admission than similarly qualified White and Asian American applicants.^[1] That, if nothing else, is indicative of a genuinely

↑ See 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 617, 619; 3 App. 1078–1080. The majority cannot deny this factual finding. Instead, it conducts its own back-of-the-envelope calculations (its numbers appear nowhere in the District Court’s opinion) regarding “the overall acceptance rates of academically excellent applicants to UNC,” in an effort to trivialize the District Court’s conclusion. Ante, at 5, n. 1. I am inclined to stick with the District Court’s findings over the majority’s unauthenticated calculations. Even when the majority’s ad hoc statistical analysis is taken at face value, it hardly supports what the majority wishes to intimate: that Black students are being admitted based on UNC’s myopic focus on “race—and race alone.” Ante, at 28, n. 6. As the District Court observed, if these Black students “were largely defined in the admissions process by their race, one would expect to find that every” such student “demonstrating academic excellence … would be admitted.” 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 619 (emphasis added). Contrary to the majority’s narrative, “race does not even act as a tipping point for some students with otherwise exceptional qualifications.” Ibid. Moreover, as the District Court also found, UNC does not even use the bespoke “academic excellence” metric that SFFA’s expert “ ‘invented’ ” for this litigation. Id., at 617, 619; see also id., at 624–625. The majority’s calculations of overall acceptance rates by race on that metric bear scant relationship to, and thus are no indictment of, how UNC’s admissions process actually works (a recurring theme in its opinion).

[1] See 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 617, 619; 3 App. 1078–1080. The majority cannot deny this factual finding. Instead, it conducts its own back-of-the-envelope calculations (its numbers appear nowhere in the District Court’s opinion) regarding “the overall acceptance rates of academically excellent applicants to UNC,” in an effort to trivialize the District Court’s conclusion. Ante, at 5, n. 1. I am inclined to stick with the District Court’s findings over the majority’s unauthenticated calculations. Even when the majority’s ad hoc statistical analysis is taken at face value, it hardly supports what the majority wishes to intimate: that Black students are being admitted based on UNC’s myopic focus on “race—and race alone.” Ante, at 28, n. 6. As the District Court observed, if these Black students “were largely defined in the admissions process by their race, one would expect to find that every” such student “demonstrating academic excellence … would be admitted.” 567 F. Supp. 3d, at 619 (emphasis added). Contrary to the majority’s narrative, “race does not even act as a tipping point for some students with otherwise exceptional qualifications.” Ibid. Moreover, as the District Court also found, UNC does not even use the bespoke “academic excellence” metric that SFFA’s expert “ ‘invented’ ” for this litigation. Id., at 617, 619; see also id., at 624–625. The majority’s calculations of overall acceptance rates by race on that metric bear scant relationship to, and thus are no indictment of, how UNC’s admissions process actually works (a recurring theme in its opinion).

[1]