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The Guardian - US
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Léonie Chao-Fong (now) and Chris Stein (earlier)

Biden condemns ruling against race-conscious admissions: ‘This is not a normal court’ – as it happened

United States Affirmative Action (Topic) Joe Biden the Supreme Court

Summary of the day

Here’s a recap of today’s developments:

  • The US supreme court, driven by its conservative supermajority, has ended race-conscious admissions at universities across the country. The conservative justices concluded that admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina violated the US constitution’s equal protection clause. The court’s decision will limit the power of colleges and universities, particularly at selective institutions, to consider an applicant’s race as a factor in the admissions process.

  • The six conservative-leaning justices on the nine-strong court prevailed over the three liberal-leaning justices, with the newest member and first Black woman on the court, Ketanji Brown Jackson, issuing a stark dissent saying the ruling meant it would “take longer for racism to leave us”. In a majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that Harvard’s program resulted in fewer Asian American students being admitted to the university, violating the Equal Protection Clause’s standard that “race may never be used as a “negative”.

  • Joe Biden said he was considering executive action and will ask the Department of Education to look into ways to maintain diversity in university student bodies. The US president said “this is not a normal court” of the bench, and said “discrimination still exists in America. Today’s decision does not change that. It’s a simple fact.”

  • Biden also said the supreme court has “gone out of its way” to “unravel basic rights” more than any other court in recent history. In an interview on MSNBC, Biden said he found the court “so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”. He also admitted his polling numbers “are not good” but argued that “they were the same way when I ran and won”.

  • The supreme court today also bolstered the ability of people to ask for religious accommodations in the workplace. In a unanimous ruling, the court made it more difficult for an employer to turn down a worker’s request for an accommodation due to their beliefs.

  • The veracity of a key document in a major LGBTQ+ rights case before the supreme court has come under question, raising the possibility that important evidence cited in it might be wrong or even falsified. The supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on Friday in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, which deals with a challenge to a Colorado law prohibiting public-serving businesses from discriminating against gay people as well as any statements announcing such a policy.

  • A judge has turned down Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss the advice columnist E Jean Carroll’s original defamation lawsuit against him, and rejected his defense that presidential immunity protects him from being liable for statements he made in 2019 that Carroll claims were defamatory.

Updated

The veracity of a key document in a major LGBTQ+ rights case before the US supreme court has come under question, raising the possibility that important evidence cited in it might be wrong or even falsified.

The supreme court is expected to issue a ruling on Friday in 303 Creative LLC v Elenis, which deals with a challenge to a Colorado law prohibiting public-serving businesses from discriminating against gay people as well as any statements announcing such a policy.

The suit centers on Lorie Smith, a website designer who does not want to provide her services for gay weddings because of her religious objections.

In 2016, she says, a gay man named Stewart requested her services for help with his upcoming wedding. “We are getting married early next year and would love some design work done for our invites, placenames etc. We might also stretch to a website,” reads a message he apparently sent her through a message on her website.

In court filings, her lawyers produced a copy of the inquiry.

But Stewart, who requested his last name be withheld for privacy, said in an interview with the Guardian that he never sent the message, even though it correctly lists his email address and telephone number. He has also been happily married to a woman for the last 15 years, he said. The news was first reported by the New Republic.

In fact, until he received a call this week from a reporter from the magazine, Stewart says had no idea he was somehow tied up in a case that had made it to the supreme court.

Read the full story here.

Chief Justice John Roberts delivered the supreme court ruling striking down race-based admissions in universities and colleges, but it was the three justices who make the court the most diverse in its 233-year history who marked the stark, embittered battle lines over affirmative action, AP News reports.

It was a moment heavy with history and emotion. Clarence Thomas, the longest serving justice and the court’s second Black justice, read a concurring opinion from the bench, pointedly rejecting the validity of using race as the basis for preferential consideration. He was followed by Sonia Sotomayor, its first Latina, whose dissenting opinion took aim at Thomas. Then came Ketanji Brown Jackson, the court’s first Black woman, whose written dissent was its own biting, metaphor-laden rebuke.

The mood in the courtroom Thursday was somber, with most of the justices sitting expressionless, taking occasional sips of water. Both Jackson and Sotomayor looked straight ahead as Roberts read the majority opinion and Thomas his concurrence.

Mike Pence has tweeted about his visit to Ukraine this week where he met with President Volodymyr Zelenskiy.

Pence said it was “incredibly humbling to be in Ukraine” and “see firsthand the heartbreaking wreckage caused by Vladimir Putin and his unprovoked invasion”.

He’s now the first GOP presidential candidate to meet with the Ukrainian leader during the campaign.

Updated

Florida governor Ron DeSantis’s campaign used the supreme court’s ruling today to take a dig at his rival Donald Trump, tweeting an old clip of the former president saying he was “fine with affirmative action”.

DeSantis’s campaign team posted the clip, from a 2015 interview with NBC, in which Trump said:

I’m fine with affirmative action. We’ve lived with it for a long time. And I lived with it for a long time. And I’ve had great relationships with lots of people.

Trump himself responded to the court’s decision to strike down race-conscious admissions programs at colleges and universities by saying that it was a “great day for America”, adding that it was “the ruling everyone was waiting and hoping for and the result was amazing”.

Updated

There are “still a lot of really good Republicans” in the Senate, Joe Biden said during his interview on MSNBC.

Biden said that six Republican senators have come to him since he was elected “to tell me, ‘Joe, I agree with you but if I’m seen doing it, I’ll lose a primary’”. He added:

I’m an eternal optimist. I still think there’s going to come a moment when they’re going to be able to break.

Updated

During his interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden admitted he knew his polling numbers “are not good” but argued that “they were the same way when I ran and won”.

Biden said he had “great faith” in the American people and that it was “important that they know that my value set is very different than the new Maga Republican party”.

He added:

Everybody thought I was gonna get clobbered in the primary. I got 80 million votes in the last election.

Here’s the clip:

Updated

Joe Biden refused to say whether he knew ahead of time about Wagner chief Yevgeny Prigozhin’s plans to march on Moscow.

“Every president is amazed that America is the lead in the world”, he told MSNBC’s Nicolle Wallace.

He said he had focused on holding Nato together and on expanding the alliance to make sure that “the most significant invasion since world war two does not succeed”.

Updated

In an interview on MSNBC, Joe Biden was asked about a report that said senior officials at the justice department resisted investigating the possible involvement of Donald Trump and his associates in the January 6 Capitol attack.

Biden said he had made a commitment that he would “not in any way interfere” with the justice department, adding that he had “not spoken one single time with the attorney general on any specific case”.

He said he had “faith that the justice department will move in a direction that is consistent with the law”.

Updated

Supreme court ‘has done more to unravel basic rights than any court in recent history’, says Biden

Joe Biden has said the supreme court has “gone out of its way” to “unravel basic rights” following its ruling on Thursday to strike down affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard.

In an interview on MSNBC, Biden was asked what he meant at a press conference earlier today when he said the supreme court was “not a normal court”. He said:

What I meant by that is it has done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court in recent history.

He said he found this court “so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.

Across the board, the vast majority of American people don’t agree with a lot of the decisions this court has made.

Biden said that although he believes the conservative majority on the court “may do too much harm”, he opposes expanding the court because it will “politicize the court forever in a way that is not healthy”.

Updated

Biden says he knows his polling numbers “are not good”, but argues that “they were the same way when I ran”.

Everybody thought I was going to get clobbered in a primary.

Updated

Biden says he’s “not spoken one single time” with the attorney general “on any specific case”.

Biden says he thinks if we start the process of trying to expand the court “we’re going to politicize it in a way that’s not healthy”.

Biden says he thinks it’s a “mistake” to expand the court. He says:

What I’ve done is I have appointed 136 judges, and … I picked people who are from various backgrounds.

We’ve appointed more women to the appellate courts, Black women to the appellate courts, than every other president in American history.

Updated

Biden says the vast majority of American people don’t agree with the supreme court’s ruling.

He says it “finds it so out of sorts with the basic value system of the American people”.

Updated

Biden is asked what he meant when he said earlier today that the supreme court is “not a normal court”.

Biden says the court has “done more to unravel basic rights and basic decisions than any court”, pointing to its ruling last year to overturn Roe v Wade.

Updated

Biden to give live interview on MSNBC

Joe Biden will in a few minutes appear from MSNBC’s New York City studios for a live interview with anchor Nicolle Wallace.

While Biden often responds to questions from reporters as he comes and goes from the White House or at the tail end of his speeches, he has done few press conferences compared with his recent predecessors, according to the American Presidency Project at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

Follow along here as the Guardian’s Léonie Chao-Fong covers the interview live.

Updated

Besides striking down affirmative action in college admissions, the supreme court today also bolstered the ability of people to ask for religious accommodations in the workplace.

In an unanimous ruling, the court made it more difficult for an employer to turn down a worker’s request for an accommodation due to their beliefs. The case, Groff v DeJoy, concerned an evangelical Christian postal worker who did not want to deliver packages on Sunday, and asked to be able to do so another day. While the nine justices did not completely rule in the employee Gerald Groff’s favor, the decision they reached was greeted as the right one both by the religious right, and by advocates for the separation of church and state. Here’s more on what they decided, from Bloomberg Law:

The justices on Thursday declined a Christian former US Postal Service worker’s bid to completely undo the high court’s 1977 decision in Trans World Airlines, Inc. v. Hardison, which said employers only need to show that a requested religion-based accommodation under Title VII of the 1964 Civil Rights Act would impose a minimal, “undue” burden to be able to reject it.

Gerald Groff had objected to delivering packages for Amazon.com Inc. on Sundays and requested an accommodation allowing him to avoid working that day on religious grounds. A divided US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit panel relied on Hardison to affirm a lower court ruling in favor of the Postal Service.

Groff advocated for a standard more like that of the Americans with Disabilities Act, which also requires accommodations for workers’ disabilities unless doing so presents an “undue hardship” on the employer. However, that law defines “undue hardship” as an “action requiring significant difficulty or expense” and provides factors for courts to consider in making that determination.

But the high court left Hardison intact and instead ruled that Title VII requires an employer denying a religious accommodation to show that the burden of granting it “would result in substantial increased costs in relation to the conduct of its particular business.”

Among those applauding the decision was Mike Pence, the former vice-president and current candidate for president who is one of the most prominent evangelical Christians in the country.

“The constitution guarantees freedom of religion, and our laws protect free exercise of religion in the workplace. As President, I will fight to ensure religious liberty in the workplace and in our schools, which for far too long has been worn away in our culture,” Pence said in a statement.

“Today’s ruling will help prevent unlawful vaccine mandates while helping to protect the unborn, and serves as another reminder that we must always appoint judges and justices who will uphold the constitution.”

In an unusual alignment of interests, Rachel Laser, president and CEO of Americans United for Separation of Church and State, also noted her approval of the court’s decision, but for completely different reasons.

“We’re facing an aggressive movement working to weaponize religious freedom, but religious freedom must never be a license to harm others, and that remains true in the workplace. Today, in a unanimous opinion, the court ‘clarified’ the standard for granting religious accommodations without overturning precedent,” Laser said.

She noted that “religious accommodations that don’t burden or harm others, like wearing a hijab or having a beard, or praying privately, are exactly what the law was designed to permit,” and “that whatever standard the court adopted for workers seeking religious accommodations, the only way to ensure equality was to ensure that workers obeying the rules of their own religion do not harm others. If anything else were true, one religion would be superior to others. The court’s ‘clarified’ standard correctly allows employers to continue to consider the burdens an employee’s requested accommodation could impose on co-workers.”

“We live to fight another day,” she concluded.

Updated

Speaking after the supreme court’s ruling today, Adam Mortara, an attorney who represented Students for Fair Admissions in their successful challenge to affirmative action at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, deployed language heard daily across the Republican party:

Complaints about corporations or other people or organizations being “woke” are common just about everywhere on the right these days, including in Congress, and on the presidential campaign trail.

Judge rejects Trump attempt to dismiss E Jean Carroll defamation case

A judge has turned down Donald Trump’s attempt to dismiss the advice columnist E Jean Carroll’s original defamation lawsuit against him, and rejected his defense that presidential immunity protects him from being liable for statements he made in 2019 that Carroll claims were defamatory, Reuters reports.

In May, a jury in a civil trial found Trump liable for sexually abusing Carroll and ordered him to pay $5m in compensatory and punitive damages. Carroll filed an amended complaint against the former president after he made disparaging remarks against her at a CNN town hall the following night. This week, Trump filed his own defamation lawsuit against Carroll, alleging she falsely accused him of rape.

Updated

Ruling against affirmative action 'a step backward for our nation' – Harris

Vice-president Kamala Harris has also spoken out against the supreme court’s ruling today striking down race-conscious college admissions.

“Today’s supreme court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v University of North Carolina is a step backward for our nation. It rolls back long-established precedent and will make it more difficult for students from underrepresented backgrounds to have access to opportunities that will help them fulfill their full potential,” said Harris, who is the first woman, as well as the first person of African American and south Asian heritage to occupy the vice-president’s office.

As California’s attorney general in 2015, Harris filed a friend of the court brief in Fisher v University of Texas, a case in which the court generally upheld race-based admissions policies.

You can read Harris’s full statement here.

Updated

The department of education will provide resources to colleges and universities addressing lawful admissions in the next 45 days on how the affirmative action court decision affects their admission processes, the White House press secretary, Karine Jean-Pierre, said.

The White House has been meeting with civil rights organizations, universities, and legal organizations to come up with a contingency plan if the court struck down affirmative action, Jean-Pierre told reporters.

Updated

The supreme court’s ruling against affirmative action in American colleges and universities could breathe new life into the push to end legacy admissions.

During his press conference earlier, Joe Biden told reporters he would direct the department of education “to analyze what practices help build a more inclusive and diverse student bodies and what practices hold that back”, adding that practices like legacy admissions “expand privilege instead of opportunity”.

Responding to the court’s decision, the New York Democratic congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez said if the court was “serious about their ludicrous ‘colorblindness’ claims, they would have abolished legacy admissions, AKA affirmative action for the privileged”. She added:

70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. SCOTUS didn’t touch that – which would have impacted them and their patrons.

Updated

Here’s a clip of Joe Biden condeming the supreme court’s conservative justices for their decision against race-based admissions.

Asked whether he believed it was a “rogue” court, Biden took a long pause before replying:

This is not a normal court.

What could happen next?

The end of affirmative action at those state levels shows just how impactful the consideration of race in admissions has been: a UC Berkeley study found that after the ban in California, the number of applicants of color in the UC system “sharply shifted away from UC’s most selective Berkeley and UCLA campuses, causing a cascade of students to enroll at lower-quality public institutions and some private universities”. Specifically, the number of Black freshmen admitted to UC Berkeley dropped to 3.6% between 2006 and 2010 – almost half of its population before the ban.

In an amicus brief in the Harvard case, attorneys for the University of Michigan, which had to stop considering race in admissions in 2006, argued that despite “persistent, vigorous and varied efforts” to achieve diversity, it has struggled to do so without race-consciousness. The number of Black and Native American students has “dramatically” dropped since the end of affirmative action in the state.

Though students of color remain underrepresented at selective colleges and universities today, institutions argue that their presence helps shape students’ on-campus experiences. The removal of race consideration from college admissions could set a precedent for a less diverse school system, which stands in stark contrast to an increasingly diverse world.

Updated

What has affirmative action in college admissions actually achieved?

After generations of near total exclusion of Black students and other students of color, colleges and universities began admitting more diverse groups in the 1960s and 70s, and soon thereafter incorporated race-consciousness into their admissions policies.

Data shows that the rise of affirmative action policies in higher education has bolstered diversity on college campuses.

In 1965, Black students accounted for roughly 5% of all undergraduates. And between 1965 and 2001, the percentage of Black undergraduates doubled. The number of Latino undergraduates also rose during that time.

Still, the practice of factoring race into the admissions process faced repeated attacks. In 1998, during an era of conservatism, California voters approved Proposition 209, which outlawed affirmative action in any state or government agency, including its university system. Since then, eight more states have eliminated such race-conscious policies.

What was affirmative action designed to do?

The concept of affirmative action originated in 1961 when President John F Kennedy issued an executive order directing government agencies to ensure that all Americans get an equal opportunity in employment. President Lyndon Johnson took it one step further in 1965, barring public and private organizations that had a federal contract from discriminating based on race, color, religion and national origin. The prohibition was added to the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

In 1969, President Richard Nixon’s assistant labor secretary, Arthur Fletcher, who would eventually be known as the “father of affirmative action”, pushed for requiring employers to set “goals and timetables” to hire more Black workers. That effort, known as the Revised Philadelphia Plan, would later influence how many schools approached their own race-conscious admissions programs.

The practice was challenged when Allan Bakke, a white man who was twice denied entry to the medical school at the University of California at Davis, sued the university, arguing that its policies, which included allocating seats for “qualified” students of color, discriminated against him. In 1978, the supreme court narrowly rejected the use of “racial quotas”, but noted that colleges and universities could use race as a factor in the admissions process. Justice Lewis Powell noted that achieving diversity represented a “compelling government interest”.

The president of Howard University, a prominent historically Black college in Washington, has described the court’s ruling on affirmative action an “unfortunate decision”.

The supreme court’s ruling against race-conscious admissions will make admissions decisions very complicated for historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs), Wayne A I Frederick told CNN. He said:

Obviously, we all are going to be kind of avoiding lawsuits, and so trying to have a very sterile process. It is going to be almost impossible, and trying to create one is going to be far more difficult today given this ruling.

So I think that we are all going to have to look at the rules very carefully.

Updated

Harvard University has responded to the supreme court’s ruling against its race-based admissions programs by saying it will comply with the court’s decision.

A letter to the school’s community reads:

We write today to reaffirm the fundamental principle that deep and transformative teaching, learning, and research depend upon a community comprising people of many backgrounds, perspectives, and lived experiences. That principle is as true and important today as it was yesterday.

The university goes on to affirm that “diversity and difference are essential to academic excellence” and that members of its student body must “reflect, and have lived, multiple facets of human experience”. It goes on:

For almost a decade, Harvard has vigorously defended an admissions system that, as two federal courts ruled, fully complied with longstanding precedent. In the weeks and months ahead, drawing on the talent and expertise of our Harvard community, we will determine how to preserve, consistent with the court’s new precedent, our essential values.

Updated

The day so far

Days after giving democracy advocates an unexpected win by rejecting a fringe legal theory that could have transformed federal elections, the supreme court’s conservative majority flexed its muscles by ruling against race-based admissions programs at two universities. Their opinion puts at risk affirmative action programs at colleges nationwide, and drew a strong rebuke from Joe Biden, who called on institutions of higher education not to retreat from the cause of diversity. He also said the current supreme court “is not a normal court” – but declined to say what he would do about it.

Here’s more about what has happened today so far:

  • The supreme court will issue more decisions on Friday.

  • Republican presidential candidates cheered the court’s ruling against race-based admissions, with Donald Trump attempting to take a particularly large share of credit.

  • Barack and Michelle Obama spoke out against the court’s ruling, with the former first lady sharing a lengthy statement regarding her experience with affirmative action.

Updated

'This is not a normal court', Biden says after ruling against affirmative action

At the conclusion of his address where he forcefully condemned the ruling by conservative supreme court justices against race-based college admissions, a reporter asked Joe Biden if he agrees with the Congressional Black Caucus that the ruling “has thrown into question (the court’s) own legitimacy”.

“This is not a normal court,” Biden replied. He did not respond when asked if he supported term limits for supreme court justices.

Joe Biden announced he will ask the department of education to look into ways to maintain diversity in university student bodies.

“Discrimination still exists in America. Today’s decision does not change that. It’s a simple fact,” the president said. “If a student has had to overcome adversity on their path to education, colleges should recognize and value that. Our nation’s colleges and universities should be engines of expanding opportunity through upward mobility.

“Today, I am directing the department of education to analyze what practices help build a more inclusive and diverse student bodies and what practices hold that back,” Biden said, noting, “Practices like legacy admissions and other systems expand privilege instead of opportunity.”

Updated

Joe Biden continued by asking colleges not to reject the cause of diversity in admissions.

“We cannot let this decision be the last word,” the president said. “The court can render a decision, it cannot change what America stands for.”

Biden called for “a new path forward a path consistent with a law that protects diversity and expands opportunity”.

He continued:

Today, I want to offer some guidance to our nation’s colleges as they review their admission systems after today’s decision, guidance that is consistent with today’s decision. They should not abandon … their commitment to ensure student bodies of diverse backgrounds and experience that reflect all of America. What I propose consideration is a new standard, where colleges take into account the adversity a student has overcome when selecting among qualified applicants.

Updated

Biden 'strongly' disagrees with supreme court ruling against affirmative action

Speaking at the White House, Joe Biden condemned the supreme court’s conservative justices for their decision released today against race-based admissions.

“In case after case, including recently, just a few years ago in 2016, the court has affirmed and reaffirmed this view that colleges could use race, not as a determining factor for admission, but as one of the factors among many in deciding who to admit,” the president said, adding that “the court once again walked away from decades of precedent.”

“The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court’s decision,” he said.

Updated

As we wait for Joe Biden to speak, Republican presidential candidate Tim Scott went on Fox News to share his view on the supreme court’s ruling against affirmative action.

Representing South Carolina, Scott is the only Black Republican in the Senate, and one of two African Americans standing for the GOP’s presidential nomination next year. “We will not be judged solely by the color of our skin. That’s what the ruling said today,” he told Fox News.

Here’s his full interview:

Biden to speak on supreme court decision against affirmative action

Joe Biden will in a few minutes give an address from the White House on the supreme court’s decision today against race-conscious admissions at universities.

Follow along here for the latest.

Biden mulling executive orders in response to supreme court ruling against affirmative action

Joe Biden has been looking into using executive orders to respond to the supreme court’s decision against affirmative action, Reuters reports, citing a source familiar.

The president has in recent weeks been anticipating the sort of decision handed down by the court’s conservative majority today, which appears set to prevent universities from taking race into account in college admissions.

Biden is scheduled to address the ruling in a speech at 12.30pm from the White House.

Democratic congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia.
Democratic congressman Hank Johnson of Georgia. Photograph: John Arthur Brown/ZUMA Press Wire/Shutterstock

Democrats in Congress have in general been decrying the supreme court’s decision against affirmative action, but the Georgia lawmaker Hank Johnson’s statement stands out.

“Justice ‘Harlan Crow’ Thomas and five other MAGAs have just slammed the college doors on Black and Brown folks after declaring that we now live in a color-blind country,” writes Johnson, referring to reports of links between justice Clarence Thomas and Crow, a Republican megadonor. “This judicial activism must be met with passage of my legislation to expand SCOTUS. This decision can lead to the demise of HBCUs. We cannot let that happen. Supreme Court Reform Now!”

Johnson has proposed a bill that would add four seats to the nation’s highest court.

Updated

Supreme court to release more decisions on Friday

The supreme court has announced that it will release more opinions on Friday 30 June. It’s likely it will announce decisions in all three cases remaining from this term, but we won’t know for sure until tomorrow.

Among the matters they have left to decide are conservative challenges to Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some federal student loan debt, and a case over whether businesses are allowed to turn down customers from the LGBTQ+ community.

Updated

'Time to redouble our efforts' after supreme court rules against affirmative action - Obama

Former president Barack Obama has now weighed in on the supreme court’s ruling against affirmative action.

Here are his thoughts, in the form of a reply to his wife Michelle Obama’s much lengthier statement:

Donald Trump, the current frontrunner for the Republican presidential nomination who as president appointed three of the conservative supreme court justices who voted to overturn affirmative action, is, of course, pleased with their ruling.

“This is a great day for America,” he said in a statement. “People with extraordinary ability and everything else necessary for success, including future greatness for our country, are finally being rewarded. This is the ruling everyone was waiting and hoping for and the result was amazing. It will also keep us competitive with the rest of the world. Our greatest minds must be cherished and that’s what this wonderful day has brought. We’re going back to all merit-based – and that’s the way it should be!”

Updated

Biden plans White House speech on supreme court ruling against affirmative action

Joe Biden will at 12.30pm eastern time speak from the White House about the supreme court’s decision overturning race-conscious admissions policies, his press office announced.

Keep it tuned to this blog, where we’ll cover the address as it happens.

Supreme court decision a death blow to affirmative action, but conservatives exempted military academies - experts

The conservative-authored supreme court decision today striking down race-based admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina is effectively the death knell for affirmative action at colleges nationwide, experts say.

Those two schools are among dozens nationwide who consider an applicant’s race as part of their admissions process, with the goal of diversifying their student bodies. But opponents have long claimed the practice amounts to racial discrimination, and after hearing the cases brought by conservative activist group Students for Fair Admissions, the supreme court found in its decision that Harvard and UNC’s policies discriminated against Asian-American applicants and violated the constitution’s equal protection clause.

In their ruling, the court didn’t outright ban affirmative action, but rather created a test for its continued use that no institution can pass, said Steve Vladeck, a law professor at the University of Texas at Austin:

But the ban does not affect all institutions of higher education in the United States. As Anthony Michael Kreis of the Georgia State University law college notes, the conservatives appear to have specifically allowed affirmative action to continue at military academies:

The former first lady Michelle Obama is out with a lengthy statement about her experience with affirmative action while in college.

Obama earned her bachelors degree from Princeton University, and a juris doctor from Harvard University, one of the schools whose race-based admissions policy was just overturned by the supreme court.

Here’s her full statement:

Updated

Arne Duncan, a former education secretary under Barack Obama, condemned the supreme court’s ruling against affirmative action:

As did Cory Booker, a Democratic senator from New Jersey:

And Cori Bush, a progressive Democrat representing part of Missouri in the House. From her statement:

In its dedication to moving backwards, the supreme court has once again rolled back protections for people in marginalized communities across this country. Ending affirmative action in higher education – which the court had already held to be legal – will have devastating impacts on our communities. Universities have historically denied Black, brown, and Indigenous people from accessing institutions of higher education. Affirmative action helped level the racist and uneven playing field. Colleges and universities must ensure students benefit from the diverse perspectives and experiences of qualified students from all backgrounds. This is yet another example of why we must double down on our efforts for court reform, pass the Judiciary Act and reclaim democracy.

Updated

In an interview with MSNBC, Derrick Johnson, president of the NAACP civil rights group, was scathing towards Clarence Thomas, the Black justice who joined with the court’s five other conservatives to strike a blow against affirmative action:

Updated

Donald Trump’s Make America Great Again Inc Super Pac is unsurprisingly pleased with the ruling against affirmative action.

“President Donald Trump made today’s historic decision to end the racist college admissions process possible because he delivered on his promise to appoint constitutionalist justices. America is a better nation as a result of the historic rulings led by Donald Trump’s three supreme court nominees,” the committee’s spokesperson Karoline Leavitt said in a statement.

Updated

Senate's Democratic leader says court decision means 'fewer opportunities' for students of color

The supreme court’s ruling against affirmative action in college admissions is a blow to the university aspirations of students of color, the Senate’s Democratic leader Chuck Schumer said.

Here’s his full statement:

The supreme court ruling has put a giant roadblock in our country’s march toward racial justice. The consequences of this decision will be felt immediately and across the country, as students of color will face an admission cycle next year with fewer opportunities to attend the same colleges and universities than their parents and older siblings. These negative consequences could continue for generations, as the historic harms of exclusion and discrimination in education and society are exacerbated.

The court’s misguided decision reminds us how far we still have to go to ensure that all Americans are treated equally. Nevertheless, we will not be daunted or deterred by this decision and we reaffirm our commitment to fighting for equal educational opportunities for all.

Updated

Republican presidential candidates cheer court ruling against affirmative action

Republicans vying for the presidential nomination next year were quick to issue statements applauding the ruling against affirmative action by the supreme court’s conservative majority.

Here’s former vice-president Mike Pence:

There is no place for discrimination based on race in the United States, and I am pleased that the supreme court has put an end to this egregious violation of civil and constitutional rights in admissions processes, which only served to perpetuate racism. I am honored to have played a role in appointing three of the justices that ensured today’s welcomed decision, and as president I will continue to appoint judges who will strictly apply the law rather than twisting it to serve woke and progressive ends.

And Nikki Haley, the ambassador to the United Nations under Donald Trump:

The world admires America because we value freedom and opportunity. The supreme court reaffirmed those values today. Picking winners and losers based on race is fundamentally wrong. This decision will help every student – no matter their background – have a better opportunity to achieve the American Dream.

Updated

The supreme court says it won’t issue any more decisions today.

The nation’s highest court issued opinions in four cases, two of which concerned affirmative action, along with one over a trademark dispute and another about religious workplace accommodations (which this blog will try to explain in a future post).

A technical note about the decision in the affirmative action case: the court was considering race-conscious admissions policies at two colleges, Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, but released their decision in one opinion. Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson joined her two liberal counterparts in dissenting in the North Carolina case, but had recused herself in the Harvard decision, and therefore filed no opinion.

Updated

The vote in the two cases concerning affirmative action, Students for Fair Admissions v University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions Inc v President & Fellows of Harvard College, broke down along the court’s partisan lines.

The six conservatives – chief justice John Roberts and associate justices Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, Brett Kavanaugh, Amy Coney Barrett – voted for the decision striking down those schools’ race-conscious admissions policies, while the three liberals, Elena Kagan, Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson dissented.

Updated

Supreme court rules against affirmative action

The conservative-dominated supreme court has just ruled against race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, in a decision with major implications for affirmative action.

Seven cases left as supreme court issues opinions

The nation’s highest court will issue another batch of opinions in just a few minutes, and with seven cases from its current term left to decide, it’s possible the conservative-dominated bench will weigh in on Joe Biden’s student loan forgiveness plan, race-conscious admissions in universities and LGTBQ+ rights.

Follow along here for more as the decisions are released.

Ahead of the supreme court’s 10am opinions announcement, here are some statistics about the term thus far, from Bloomberg Law:

There’s more than one news story happening at the supreme court this morning.

As the below shot from Fox 5 DC makes clear, not only will the justices issue opinions in about 30 minutes’ time, they’ll do so in an environment made worse by wildfire smoke from Canada that is rendering the air in a huge part of the United States hazardous:

Updated

Three pieces of unfinished supreme court business

The supreme court has seven decisions left to release, and as always, there’s no telling which will come today. If they don’t release all of them, they will have another opportunity on Friday. Sure, they could issue all of them today, but the court has lately made public somewhere around two to four opinions at a time, so don’t be surprised if we find ourselves once again watching the nation’s highest court at the same time tomorrow.

Nonetheless, it’s possible the court will, starting at 10am, decide several weighty matters before it with implications for the entire country. Here are three of the biggest cases they have yet to decide:

  • The court is considering a challenge to race-conscious admissions at universities. Proponents of the practice say it has helped schools admit more students of color and diversify their classes, while opponents equate it to racial discrimination.

  • Several Republican-led states have sued over Joe Biden’s plan to relieve some federal student loan debt. The supreme court kept the program blocked while considering the challenges against it, and could kill it for good with a ruling.

  • The justices could weigh in on the case of Lorie Smith, a Colorado web designer who says her religious beliefs prevent her from making websites for same-sex couples. LGTBQ+ advocates fear a ruling in her favor could open up new avenues of discrimination against gay, lesbian and transgender people.

Updated

Conservative-dominated supreme court may rule on student debt relief, affirmative action

Good morning, US politics blog readers. The supreme court is issuing another batch of decisions at 10am ET, and today could be the day that the court’s conservative majority flexes its muscles. The opinions released in the court’s term thus far have come as a relief to progressives, with the justices declining to endorse a fringe legal theory that could have upended election rules nationwide, and also maintaining part of the Voting Rights Acts in a decision that may help Democrats regain the majority in the House of Representatives next year.

But they still have not ruled on pending cases concerning race-conscious university admissions, Joe Biden’s program to relieve some federal student loan debt and the ability of businesses to refuse to work with the LGBTQ+ community, and in these matters, the conservatives who hold six of the court’s nine seats could issue opinions with impacts nationwide – as they did last year by overturning Roe v Wade, and expanding the ability to carry a concealed weapon, among other decisions.

Here’s what else is happening today:

  • Biden is heading to New York City where, besides participating in a fundraiser, he will give a live television interview on MSNBC at 4pm.

  • Congressional leaders announced this morning that Israel’s president Isaac Herzog will address a joint session of the House and Senate on 19 July.

  • Election gurus at the University of Virginia Center for Politics released an early analysis of the balance of power ahead of 2024, and find a close race between the two party’s presidential nominees.

Updated

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