Race-Conscious Admissions and Equal Protection in Higher Education. CRS Report R48043, Version 1

In its 2023 decision in "Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard," the Supreme Court effectively ended its approval of affirmative action in higher education admissions, holding that practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC) were unlawful. The Court concluded that UNC's practices violated the guarantee of equal protection in the Fourteenth Amendment to the Constitution, which generally prohibits governmental racial discrimination. Additionally, while the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause applies directly only to state-run educational institutions, its nondiscrimination requirements apply equally to private colleges and universities that receive federal funds under Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 (Title VI), which prohibits recipients of federal dollars from discriminating on the basis of race. In "Students for Fair Admissions," the Court concluded that Harvard's affirmative action program violated this statutory provision for the same reasons that UNC's violated the Constitution. This report describes the evolution of the Supreme Court's voluntary affirmative action jurisprudence and the "Students for Fair Admissions" decision's implications. The report concludes by discussing the role that Title VI plays in ensuring equal protection in higher education, including several avenues for congressional action under the Act.