The Supreme Court discovers that ending affirmative action is hard

Contributing sentiments towards policy:

56% : The Supreme Court spent an inordinate amount of time on Monday hearing arguments in two cases about affirmative action in university admissions.
56% : Roberts, for example, appeared open to the possibility that affirmative action could be permissible at the service academies -- the Court has historically shown more deference to the military than to other institutions.
54% : Indeed, one perennial ritual that plays out every single time the Court hears a case about affirmative action in college admissions is that a raft of major employers file amicus briefs begging the Court not to overrule cases like Grutter.
51% :(Although Harvard is a private university, the Court's decision in 1978's Regents of the University of California v. Bakke held that private schools are subject to the same rules governing race that the Constitution imposes on their public counterparts.)
51% : And, notably, both of the lawyers arguing against affirmative action on Monday acknowledged that a university could decide to admit a student based on an admissions essay that discusses the student's racial background.
49% : I want to acknowledge that the questions raised by affirmative action policies are difficult.
47% : That said, at least some of the Court's conservatives seemed bothered by several difficult questions that are likely to arise if they hand down a decision banning affirmative action.
47% : Chief Justice John Roberts suggested that maybe affirmative action should still be allowed at service academies like West Point or the Naval Academy, after Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar argued that the military's "strength, cohesiveness, and military readiness" will suffer without a diverse officer corps.
47% : Even if one of the conservative justices who expressed some reservations today surprises us, that would still likely leave five votes teed up against affirmative action.
40% : Students for Fair Admissions is largely a front group for Ed Blum, a white activist who frequently advances lawsuits attacking programs such as affirmative action or the Voting Rights Act.
38% :Multiple conservative justices, including Roberts, Kavanaugh, and Barrett, pointed to language in Grutter predicting that "25 years from now, the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today," or to language in Grutter suggesting that affirmative action must eventually have an "end point."
33% : That means that the Court is highly likely to implement the GOP's longtime position that affirmative action should be illegal.
23% : Although conservative Justice Anthony Kennedy surprised most Court observers when he voted twice during the Obama administration to weaken, but not forbid, affirmative action programs, every Republican appointed to the Supreme Court since Thomas's appointment in 1991 has consistently opposed affirmative action.

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