Colleges and universities may no longer factor race into admissions after the Supreme Court ruled 6-3 to end affirmative action in a consolidated decision handed down Thursday. The end of race-conscious college admissions will have a particularly outsized impact on women of color.

The decision in two cases — Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. University of North Carolina and Students for Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College — reverses 45 years of legal precedent. In 1978’s Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, the court determined that affirmative action was lawful, a ruling that it upheld multiple times, including in the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger and in the 2013 and 2016 cases Fisher v. University of Texas. In these decisions, White women claimed they were denied higher education admission because of their race.

The Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action comes as college enrollment has dropped steadily since 2019. The student debt crisis, which disproportionately affects women of color, is one issue that’s been linked to this downward enrollment trend. In August, President Joe Biden forgave up to $20,000 in loan debt for qualifying students, but lawsuits following the decision blocked the federal government from providing this relief while it is being decided by the courts. The Supreme Court is expected to rule soon in two related cases about Biden’s debt forgiveness plan: Biden v. Nebraska and Department of Education v. Brown.

The effort to block affirmative action coincides with a movement to end diversity, equity and inclusion endeavors in higher education. Kimberlé Crenshaw, a professor at the UCLA School of Law and Columbia Law School, told The 19th in May that the trend suggests that some individuals have a distorted view of equity.

“People have no idea how far a decision that claims that equity and inclusion is discriminatory will go to underscore demands that we stop talking about racism, we stop talking about sexism, we stop talking about homophobia and transphobia,” said Crenshaw, whose work this year was cut from the College Board’s new Advanced Placement African American Studies course.

“The idea that integration and inclusion is discriminatory against White people is the oldest idea in the book. Even at the end of Reconstruction, basically giving the freedmen rights was vetoed by the president at the time who said, ‘This is discrimination against White people,’” she said. “As late as the civil rights movement, they said forcing [White] people to serve Black people discriminates against them.”

Read the full article about the end of affirmative action by Nadra Nittle at The 19th.