Aaron Sibarium of the Washington Free Beacon explains why Duke University and top Ivy League schools face a new legal threat.
The group behind the lawsuit that brought down affirmative action in college admissions is demanding answers from universities that saw almost no change in the racial breakdown of their classes after the ban took effect, arguing that the similarity is evidence of discrimination and possible grounds for a lawsuit.
Students for Fair Admissions, which won its landmark case against Harvard before the Supreme Court last year, sent letters on Tuesday to Yale, Princeton, and Duke, urging their lawyers to “preserve all potentially relevant documents” in the event of litigation.
“SFFA is deeply concerned that you are not complying with Harvard,” the letters read, a reference to Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, the 2023 Supreme Court ruling that outlawed racial preferences in college admissions. “You told the Supreme Court that, without explicit racial preferences, it would be impossible to ‘obtain the diverse student body’ that you obtained in the past.”
Yale, Princeton, and Duke signed an amicus brief in 2022 stating that black and Hispanic enrollment would plunge in the absence of affirmative action. But when those schools released data on the first classes they admitted after the Supreme Court decision, the number of black and Hispanic students was virtually unchanged.
The number of Asian students, meanwhile, declined at all three schools—by 2 percentage points at Princeton and 6 percentage points at Yale and Duke. Both outcomes would have required dramatic and hitherto unannounced changes to the admissions process, according to the letters, which ask each school to explain what “new, substantial race-neutral alternatives” were adopted after the affirmative action ban.
“Without that information, SFFA will conclude that you are circumventing the Supreme Court’s decision,” the letters say. “SFFA is prepared to enforce Harvard against you through litigation.”
