Justice Clarence Thomas pressed North Carolina’s solicitor general to explain how the University of North Carolina defines diversity during oral arguments on Monday in a Supreme Court case centered around the use of race as a factor in college admissions.
"I've heard the word diversity quite a few times and I don't have a clue what it means," said Thomas. "It seems to mean everything for everyone."
Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA) has challenged the race-based admissions policies of both Harvard and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC), accusing both schools of discriminating against Asian-American applicants. The cases were initially merged, but are now being heard separately after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself from the Harvard case because she had previously served on the university's board of overseers.
The cases open the door for the Supreme Court’s 6-3 conservative majority to reconsider its 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which allowed race to be used as a factor in college admissions to achieve student body diversity. Justice Sandra Day O'Connor wrote for the Grutter majority that race should be used as a "plus factor," and argued that such usage does not violate the 14th Amendment's Equal Protection Clause.
Thomas asked Ryan Park, the North Carolina solicitor general, to offer a specific definition of diversity in the context of UNC and provide a clear idea of what the educational benefits of diversity at the school would be.
"First, we define diversity the way this court has, in its court’s precedents, which means a broadly diverse set of criteria that extends to all different backgrounds and perspectives and not solely limited to race," said Park, before adding that there are "many different diversity factors that are considered as a greater factor in our admissions process than race."
"I didn't go to racially diverse schools but there were educational benefits," replied Thomas, before again pushing for Park to list specific educational benefits.
Park said that there is a "truth seeking function of learning in a diverse environment," and pointed out that certain studies have found that racially diverse groups of people making stock trading decisions perform at a higher level, and make more efficient trading decisions.
"The mechanism there is it reduces group think and people have longer and more sustained disagreement and that leads to a more efficient outcome," Park explained.
Thomas said he doesn’t “put much stock in that because I've heard similar arguments in favor of segregation, too."
Later, Thomas asked about the percentage difference between a non-racial approach and the school’s race conscious approach to admissions. Park answered that around 1.2 percent of the applicant pool as a whole is affected by its program.
“So do you think that 1.2 percent marginal difference is enough of a compelling interest to continue a race-based program?” Thomas asked.
Park replied that the school considers race “only minimally.”
“We think that we would not face some of the struggles that we do in terms of admitting and enrolling underrepresented minorities if we considered it to a larger extent but we have chosen to… be guided by this court's precedents to consider it only minimally,” he said.
The Supreme Court will likely announce its decisions in both the UNC and Harvard cases sometime next year.
Nine states have already ended consideration of race in university admissions, including Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma and Washington.
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