DOJ Urges Supreme Court to Not Hear Affirmative Action Case

The United States Department of Justice, under new management since it filed an amicus brief in the United States Court of Appeals for the First Circuit in support of the group known as Students For Fair Admissions for its lawsuit against Harvard University over its consideration of race in admissions decision-making, has asked the U.S. Supreme Court to pass on hearing the SFFA v. Harvard case. Attorney General Merrick Garland’s Department of Justice is, unsurprisingly, very different than William Barr’s Department of Justice and that is quite evident indeed through its most recent signal that the DOJ supports the practice of Affirmative Action in college admissions.

As Chris Villani reports for Law360 in a piece entitled “DOJ Asks Top Court To Pass On Harvard Admissions Suit,” “The Biden administration on Wednesday urged the U.S. Supreme Court to pass on hearing the case challenging Harvard University’s race-conscious admissions process, saying lower courts were right to find the Ivy League school’s policies constitutional. The justices are weighing whether to take the high-profile challenge and a companion case against the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, and sought the government’s take on the case in June. As the suit played out in Massachusetts federal court, the Trump administration backed Students for Fair Admissions, the group suing Harvard alleging discrimination against Asian American applicants.”

It will be interesting to see where America’s highest court lands here. With a now significant conservative majority, the Supreme Court’s decision to even hear the case would place Affirmative Action in peril. But it’s quite possible they’ll defer to the decisions of the lower courts. Only time will tell!