U.S. Supreme Court

A landmark 2023 U.S. Supreme Court decision ended the consideration of race in college admissions. But one year after the ruling, research shows the number of students of color applying to four-year colleges has increased.

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action in a landmark ruling, effectively ending race-based college admissions. But what was meant to be a law targeting higher education institutions may have impacted other industries.

Donald Trump brags about being the person responsible for overturning Roe and has dodged politically tricky questions about a federal abortion ban by saying decisions about abortion are now in the hands of the states. But he can’t dodge the reality that one in three women of reproductive age now lives under an abortion ban.

High school seniors of color could face a lot more challenges in both college applications and, longer term, hiring in the aftermath of the Supreme Court’s recent decision to ban race as a factor in college admissions.

On June 30, a long-awaited and consequential Supreme Court decision denied forgiveness that would have erased $430 billion of federal student loan balances for 20 million borrowers and lowered the median amount owed by another 23 million borrowers from $29,400 to $13,600. 

The Supreme Court’s decision last week to strike down President Biden’s signature student loan forgiveness plan will disproportionately impact Black borrowers, who are more likely to finance their degrees through debt because they have less generational wealth, are the first in their families to attend college and experience pay disparities after graduation. 

The conservative wing of the Supreme Court, led by Chief Justice John Roberts, did what many people thought they might do but prayed they wouldn’t.

The six Supreme Court justices who last week struck down affirmative action in college admissions ignored America’s legacy of slavery and segregation, while the three dissenting justices, all of whom are women, recognized this history of slavery and its continuing effects in colleges.

Last week’s Supreme Court ruling on Section 2 of the Voting Rights Act stunned many people in Black and brown communities.

The lead plaintiff in an Alabama voting rights case before the United States Supreme Court visited Boston last week to raise funds and cultivate allies for a statewide coalition of activists working to promote Black civic engagement in the southern state.

For decades, we have relied on Supreme Court decisions like Brown v. Board of Education that outlawed systemic discrimination in public schools, and the 1966 decision to ban poll taxes in state elections to keep our country’s moral arc bending towards justice, as Martin Luther King Jr. famously said.

On October 31, the Supreme Court will hear two cases that will determine the future of affirmative action.