Page:Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College.pdf/4

Syllabus

inherent folly of that approach—of trying to derive equality from inequality—soon became apparent. As the Court subsequently recognized, even racial distinctions that were argued to have no palpable effect worked to subordinate the afflicted students. See, e.g., McLaurin v. Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Ed., 339 U. S. 637, 640–642. By 1950, the inevitable truth of the Fourteenth Amendment had thus begun to reemerge: Separate cannot be equal.

The culmination of this approach came finally in Brown v. Board of Education, 347 U. S. 483. There, the Court overturned the separate but equal regime established in Plessy and began on the path of invalidating all de jure racial discrimination by the States and Federal Government. The conclusion reached by the Brown Court was unmistakably clear: the right to a public education “must be made available to all on equal terms.” 347 U. S., at 493. The Court reiterated that rule just one year later, holding that “full compliance” with Brown required schools to admit students “on a racially nondiscriminatory basis.” Brown v. Board of Education, 349 U. S. 294, 300–301.

In the years that followed, Brown’s “fundamental principle that racial discrimination in public education is unconstitutional,” id., at 298, reached other areas of life—for example, state and local laws requiring segregation in busing, Gayle v. Browder, 352 U. S. 903 (per curiam); racial segregation in the enjoyment of public beaches and bathhouses Mayor and City Council of Baltimore v. Dawson, 350 U. S. 877 (per curiam); and antimiscegenation laws, Loving v. Virginia, 388 U. S. 1. These decisions, and others like them, reflect the “core purpose” of the Equal Protection Clause: “do[ing] away with all governmentally imposed discrimination based on race.” Palmore v. Sidoti, 466 U. S. 429, 432.

Eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it. Accordingly, the Court has held that the Equal Protection Clause applies “without regard to any differences of race, of color, or of nationality”—it is “universal in [its] application.” Yick Wo v. Hopkins, 118 U. S. 356, 369. For “[t]he guarantee of equal protection cannot mean one thing when applied to one individual and something else when applied to a person of another color.” Regents of Univ. of Cal. v. Bakke, 438 U. S. 265, 289–290.

Any exceptions to the Equal Protection Clause’s guarantee must survive a daunting two-step examination known as “strict scrutiny,” Adarand Constructors, Inc. v. Peña, 515 U. S. 200, 227, which asks first whether the racial classification is used to “further compelling governmental interests,” Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U. S. 306, 326, and second whether the government’s use of race is “narrowly tailored,” i.e., “necessary,” to achieve that interest, Fisher v. University of Tex. at Austin, 570 U. S. 297, 311–312. Acceptance of race-based state action