Harvard Isn't Discriminating Against Asian-Americans, Federal Court Rules

Harvard University can continue to consider race in its admissions decisions, after a federal appeals court ruled that it isn’t discriminating against Asian-Americans.

The U.S. Court of Appeals in Boston on Thursday agreed with a lower court that the nation’s oldest college complies with the law in weighing race as one factor among many to select a diverse class.

The court ruled that race was an integral factor in Harvard’s mission to educate “the citizenry and citizen leaders for our society” by looking beyond perfect grades and test scores.

But the legal battle, which comes amid a fraught national reckoning on race, is far from over. The plaintiff seeking to force Harvard to abandon the practice, the anti-affirmative action group Students for Fair Admissions, said on Thursday that it would ask the U.S. Supreme Court to reverse the ruling and toss out decades of precedent.

It’s unclear whether the high court, now with a 6-3 conservative majority, will agree to revisit the issue -- or choose to hear the Harvard case in particular. The University of North Carolina and the University of Texas are defending themselves against similar challenges by SFFA, and President Donald Trump’s Justice Department has filed suit against Yale University over its consideration of race.

In its ruling, the appeals court also rejected arguments posed by the Justice Department, which joined the case as a party, siding with SFFA.

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SFFA President Edward Blum, a longtime foe of affirmative action, said “hope is not lost.”

“This lawsuit is now on track to go up to the U.S. Supreme Court where we will ask the justices to end these unfair and unconstitutional race-based admissions policies at Harvard and all colleges and universities,” Blum said in a statement.

In a statement hailing the decision, Harvard President Lawrence Bacow said “the consideration of race, alongside many other factors, helps us achieve our goal of creating a student body that enriches the education of every student.” He called diversity “a pathway for excellence for both Harvard and the nation.”

“We will continue to defend these principles and our admissions process all the way to the Supreme Court, if necessary,” Bacow said.

Under U.S. law, Harvard is prohibited from using race in its admissions process unless its use can withstand a court’s “strict scrutiny” by advancing a “compelling interest” and being “narrowly tailored” to achieve that goal.

In its 104-page ruling, the two-judge panel on Thursday pointed to Supreme Court rulings to note that “attaining student body diversity may be a compelling interest” and found that Harvard’s program was sufficiently narrow in that it doesn’t use quotas or engage in “racial balancing,” among other factors. It rejected SFFA’s argument that Harvard imposed a “significant penalty” on Asian-American applicants.

“Enabling students to understand, relate to, and learn from people of different backgrounds is one of the main goals of Harvard’s race-conscious admissions program,” the panel said.

It cited a 2015 study on diversity by a Harvard dean who noted that for centuries the school, founded in 1636, educated only a “small subset” of men who had the means to travel to its campus. Recognizing the “disastrous condition of public affairs” after the Civil War, the school determined to “remove prejudices” and assemble a more varied student body, the study said.

Nor is the Ivy League college unique in this effort, the panel found.

“Many other colleges and universities consider an applicant’s race, in addition to many other factors, in admissions,” it wrote. “And the business community has communicated its interest in having a well-educated, diverse hiring pool both in this case and in the prior governing Supreme Court cases.”

The court observed that Harvard’s share of African American, Hispanic and other minority students would fall by 45% if the college didn’t take race into account, and that the school considers “all types of diversity, not just racial diversity.”

It added that “Harvard’s admissions process is so competitive that race is not decisive for highly qualified candidates.”

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