A recent legal analysis by the conservative-leaning Philanthropy Roundtable argues that the Supreme Court ruling barring affirmative action in college and university admissions could have far-reaching consequences for race-conscious hiring practices in philanthropy and the nonprofit sector.

While the Supreme Court decision ostensibly addressed only admissions practices in higher education, the legal basis for the ruling could potentially be extended in the near future to any entities receiving federal funding and general hiring practices in the private sector, whether or not the employer is a recipient of such federal funds.

“This means that employers who may have been using similar practices to higher education, where policies resulted in decisions being made on the basis of an individual’s race, may be open to legal scrutiny and liability for violating anti-discrimination law,” a summary of the report states.

The report’s conclusions are based on a legal analysis on behalf of the Philanthropy Roundtable by Jonathan Berry, an attorney at Boyden Gray PLLC, and a former head regulator for the US Department of Labor.

The analysis does not hide a conservative orientation toward affirmative action. Berry writes, “In many ways, higher education had long been a notable exception to the otherwise-stringent prohibitions in the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI against racial discrimination,” effectively equating affirmative action with “racial discrimination.”

But Mr. Berry’s conclusions regarding the implications of the decision for the private sector largely mirror similar ones drawn by other commentators of different political stripes in recent weeks, including Harvard Law Professor Noah Feldman and the Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy at Northwestern University Director Alvin B. Tillery, Jr., among others.

Read the full article about affirmative action and hiring by Isaiah Thompson at Nonprofit Quarterly.