SFFA v. Harvard: what the Supreme Court decided about race in admissions, and what's still allowed

For 45 years, the Supreme Court allowed selective colleges to consider an applicant's race as one factor among many. In 2023 it stopped. The decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. President and Fellows of Harvard College, decided together with a case against the University of North Carolina, changed how every selective college reads an application.Footnote 1 Here's what the Court decided, what led up to it, and what it means for the essays you're writing now.

How we got here#

The story starts in 1978. In Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the medical school at UC Davis had reserved 16 of its 100 seats for minority applicants. The Court struck that set-aside down. But Justice Powell's controlling opinion said a university could still consider race as one factor, to gain the educational benefits of a diverse class.Footnote 2 That reasoning became the foundation for race-conscious admissions.

In 2003 the Court drew the line more precisely. It upheld Michigan Law School's holistic, individualized review in Grutter v. Bollinger. On the same day, in Gratz v. Bollinger, it struck down Michigan's undergraduate system, which automatically awarded 20 points, on a scale where 100 guaranteed admission, to applicants from underrepresented groups.Footnote 3Footnote 4 The Grutter majority added a sentence that would matter 20 years later: "We expect that 25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today."Footnote 3

Two challenges to the University of Texas followed. In 2013 the Court sent the case back and told lower courts to look harder at whether race-neutral alternatives would work.Footnote 5 In 2016 it upheld UT's program 4–3.Footnote 6 In between, it held in 2014 that states could ban race-conscious admissions at their own public universities, as Michigan's voters had.Footnote 7

What the Court decided in 2023#

Students for Fair Admissions sued two very different schools. Harvard, a private college that receives federal funds, is bound by Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. UNC, a public university, is bound by the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.Footnote 1 The opinion notes the stakes: Harvard receives more than 60,000 applications for a class of about 1,600, and UNC about 43,500 for about 4,200.Footnote 1

Chief Justice Roberts wrote for a six-justice majority. The vote was 6–3 in the UNC case and 6–2 in the Harvard case, which Justice Jackson did not take part in.Footnote 1 The majority held that both programs failed for four reasons:Footnote 1

• No measurable objectives. Goals such as training future leaders or producing new knowledge were, in the Court's view, too vague for a court to review.
• Race used as a negative. Admissions are zero-sum, so a benefit to some applicants is a disadvantage to others.
• Racial stereotyping. Treating race as a proxy for a particular point of view is what the Equal Protection Clause forbids.
• No end point. Neither school could say when it would stop. The Court read Grutter's 25 years as an expectation, not a guarantee that preferences could last until 2028.

The dissent#

Justice Sotomayor, joined by Justice Kagan and, in the UNC case, Justice Jackson, wrote that the decision "rolls back decades of precedent and momentous progress." She argued that in a society where race continues to matter, ignoring it entrenches inequality rather than ending it.Footnote 1 Justice Jackson wrote a separate dissent in the UNC case. On the other side, Justice Thomas's concurrence defended a color-blind reading of the Constitution, quoting Justice Harlan's dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson.Footnote 1 The disagreement is about what equal protection requires: treating every applicant the same regardless of race, or taking race into account to address inequality.

What colleges can still consider#

The most important passage for applicants is near the end of the majority opinion. The Court wrote that "nothing in this opinion should be construed as prohibiting universities from considering an applicant's discussion of how race affected his or her life, be it through discrimination, inspiration, or otherwise."Footnote 1 It then set the limit: colleges can't use essays to rebuild the system it had just struck down. A benefit to a student who overcame discrimination must be tied to that student's courage and determination, and "the student must be treated based on his or her experiences as an individual—not on the basis of race."Footnote 1

Try sorting real-world practices with that line in mind.

What changed after the ruling#

• Federal guidance. In August 2023, the Departments of Education and Justice told colleges they could still weigh an applicant's individual experiences, socioeconomic status and adversity, and could pursue outreach using race-neutral criteria.Footnote 8 That guidance has since been rescinded. A stricter February 2025 letter from the Department of Education was vacated by a federal court in August 2025.Footnote 9
• The Common App. Its race and ethnicity question stayed optional, and since August 2023, colleges can choose to hide applicants' answers from the application file their readers see.Footnote 10
• Enrollment. Some colleges published the results. MIT reported that about 16% of its first class admitted after the ruling identified as Black, Hispanic, and/or Native American or Pacific Islander, compared with about 25% in recent years.Footnote 11
• More data. A 2025 presidential memorandum led to a new federal survey that asks four-year colleges to report applicants, admits and enrollees by race and sex, so the effects can be tracked.Footnote 12Footnote 13

Nothing here is legal advice, and the law is still developing. Courts and federal agencies are still working out how far the ruling reaches beyond admissions. For your application, the practical rule is simple: tell the reader what you've done and what you've learned, in your own words.