On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that colleges and universities cannot explicitly consider race as a factor in admissions decisions, which essentially ends affirmative action in college admissions as we know it. The ruling was long expected of the conservative-dominated court and came at a time when political debates over addressing racism and racial inequity continued throughout the country.

After months of speculation, the Supreme Court issued its long-awaited ruling on affirmative action. The court ruled in two cases brought against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina that the colleges’ policies regarding race as a factor in admissions “lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.” The majority decision held that these policies violated the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment, one of the post-Civil War amendments to the U.S. Constitution.

Mitchell Hamline School of Law professor T. Anansi Wilson noted, “Without an inch of irony,” the Supreme Court issued this ruling using “a reconstruction amendment meant to make full citizens of African Americans and help undue the legacy of racism and chattel slavery.”

The decision on the UNC case was 6-3, with the court’s six conservative justices all voting to end affirmative action in college admissions and the three liberal justices voting to keep the policy. The decision for the Harvard case was 6-2 as Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself due to her previous ties to Harvard.

The majority ruling issued by the court claims race could still factor into admissions decisions in other ways, such as being incorporated into students’ admissions essays. 

“Nothing prohibits universities from considering an applicant’s discussion of how race affected the applicant’s life, so long as that discussion is concretely tied to a quality of character or unique ability that the particular applicant can contribute to the university,” the ruling states.

Nevertheless, the liberal justices noted in their dissents that the impact of this decision would be felt deeply by racial minorities. 

Justice Sonia Sotomayor says that in issuing this ruling, “the Court subverts the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the very foundation of our democratic government and pluralistic society.” 

Justice Brown Jackson, meanwhile, was even harsher toward her conservative colleagues: “With let-them-eat-cake obliviousness, today, the majority pulls the ripcord and announces ‘colorblindness for all’ by legal fiat,” Brown Jackson wrote in her dissent. “But deeming race irrelevant in law does not make it so in life.”

In October, the Supreme Court heard arguments in the cases the group Students for Fair Admissions brought against Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. SFFA argued on behalf of Asian American students that they were negatively discriminated against by affirmative action policies that favored underrepresented students in the admissions process instead. SFFA is a creation of Edward Blum, a white affirmative action opponent who has engineered several cases against the policy. Blum had previously arranged several cases challenging affirmative action; as recently as 2016, the Supreme Court narrowly upheld using race in admissions decisions in a case driven by Blum involving the University of Texas.

Since 2016, three conservative justices appointed by former President Donald Trump have shifted the court toward the ideological right. Over the past decade, the conservative majority has weakened the Voting Rights Act and overturned Roe v. Wade, among other rulings. A surprise ruling last month, in which the Supreme Court sided with voting rights advocates to overturn redistricting in Alabama that was accused of being racially gerrymandered, gave progressive court watchers some hope the justices would not continuously pursue a far-right agenda. But on Thursday, the court’s conservatives banded together to oppose affirmative action.

This ruling will likely have a far-reaching impact on the United States in many ways. Most immediately, experts predict the end of affirmative action policies will significantly lower the number of underrepresented minority applicants, including Black, Latino and Indigenous students admitted to college. Beyond that, however, schools like Harvard had previously argued having more diverse student bodies benefits all students and not just those from marginalized backgrounds, meaning the expected decrease in diversity will negatively affect the education and experiences of the students admitted under the changed policies.

The ruling, seen as a victory for conservatives and a defeat for liberals, will also impact politics. The White House announced it is reviewing the situation, and President Biden will likely comment on it at some point soon. Meanwhile, various Republican presidential candidates and officials have celebrated the ruling. With these strong reactions continuing and the educational impact this fall and beyond, the Supreme Court’s anti-affirmative action ruling will have significant fallout for some time.

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