Despite striking down two voluntary school-integration plans in a 5-to-4 ruling on Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court left solidly intact its precedents dealing with affirmative action in higher education.
Rather than signaling any clear desire to revisit its past decisions on race-conscious admissions policies — as some conservative groups had urged it to do — the court’s majority cited those precedents repeatedly as justification for holding that the school-integration policies before it violated the 14th Amendment’s guarantee of equal protection under the law.