The University of North Carolina (UNC) explicitly awards racial preferences to “underrepresented minorities” in the admissions process for its undergraduate students. This preference is not merely a small part of its decision making process. In many circumstances, UNC’s admissions officers explicitly focus on racial classifications, treating an applicant’s race as a top-line qualification alongside GPA and SAT scores.

As a companion case to its challenge to Harvard’s system of racial preferences—which on its face seems statistically more significant—a group called Students for Fair Admissions has petitioned the Supreme Court to review a district court’s decision to uphold UNC’s admissions practices. Cato has filed an amicus brief supporting this petition.

We argue that the Court should hear the UNC case in conjunction with the Harvard case. Current doctrine holds Title VI of the Civil Rights Act to apply restrictions on private universities receiving federal funds equivalent to the protections of the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause, but it’s important that the Court specifically hold public institutions to the Constitution’s prohibition on racial discrimination. Racial classifications by the government are particularly destructive, because they signify a polity’s collective position. Moreover, evaluating the particulars of UNC’s practices will give the Court greater context with which to consider the harms of racial classifications in higher education.

The Court has a longstanding practice of using public institutions as vehicles to address affirmative action cases in higher education. We urge the Court to continue that practice, review UNC’s policies alongside Harvard’s, and hold that the Constitution proscribes racial preferences in public institutions of higher education.