Nine states have banned affirmative action at public universities including California, where voters did so in a ballot proposition in 1996 and rebuffed an attempt to revive the policy…reports Asian Lite News
The United States Supreme Court is set to hear a controversial issue on Monday — the use of race in deciding who gets admitted to some of America’s top universities.
And the conservative-dominated court may be poised to make another historic U-turn, like it did in June when it overturned the landmark 1973 “Roe v. Wade” decision guaranteeing a woman’s right to abortion, the AFP reported.
The court is to hear two hours of oral arguments on the use of race in admissions to Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) — respectively the oldest private and public institutions of higher education in the country.
According to AFP report, Harvard and UNC, like a number of other competitive schools, use race as a factor in trying to ensure representation of minorities, historically African Americans, in the student body.
The policy known as “affirmative action” emerged from the Civil Rights Movement in the late 1960s to “help address our country’s long history of discrimination and systemic inequality in higher education,” said Yasmin Cader, deputy legal director at the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), it was reported.
Nine states have banned affirmative action at public universities including California, where voters did so in a ballot proposition in 1996 and rebuffed an attempt to revive the policy in 2020, it was reported.