The Supreme Court ban on affirmative action has had a huge impact on Harvard Law School – with the number of black students enrolling dropping dramatically this fall.
Only 19 first-year black students enrolled at the prestigious school this year, or 3.4 percent of the class, according to data from the American Bar Association.
Some 43 black students enrolled in the first-year class in 2023. This year’s comparatively scarce turnout is also the lowest since the 1960s.
There was also a marked reduction in the number of Hispanic students entering the school this year. Some 39 enrolled, or 6.9 percent of the class, compared with 63 students amounting to 11 percent in 2023.
The decline at Harvard was much more dramatic than at other Ivy League law schools. Harvard was also named in the decision to end affirmative action in 2023. Meanwhile, enrollment of white and Asian students increased, figures show.
Harvard Law Professor David B. Wilkins, said the decline in black students enrolling ‘obviously has a lot to do with the chilling effect created by that decision’.
‘This is the lowest number of Black entering first-year students since 1965,’ Wilkins, who has studied diversity in the legal industry, told the New York Times.
Wilkins said there were 15 entering black students in 1965, and this number climbed to between 50 to 70 each year since 1970. Affirmative action was introduced in 1961.
The Supreme Court ban on affirmative action has had a huge impact on Harvard Law School – with the number of black students enrolling dropping dramatically this fall
The Supreme Court (pictured) banned colleges from using race as a factor when admitting students in a landmark ruling on affirmative action in June 2023
A spokesman for Harvard Law, Jeff Neal, said in a statement to the NYT that the school continued ‘to believe that a student body composed of persons with a wide variety of backgrounds and experiences is a vital component of legal education.’
‘Harvard Law School remains committed both to following the law and to fostering an on-campus community and a legal profession that reflect numerous dimensions of human experience,’ he added.
The same pattern was also seen a the University of North Carolina, which was also named as a defendant in the Supreme Court’s affirmative action case in 2023.
There were only nine black first-years at the school this year, compared with 13 in 2023. The number of Hispanic students declined from 21 last year to 13 this year.
The opposite trend was seen at Stanford, where the number of black first-year students rose from 12 last year to 23 this year.
The Supreme Court banned colleges from using race as a factor when admitting students in a landmark ruling on affirmative action in June 2023.
The justices decided in a 6-3 vote that the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill (UNC)’s race-based affirmative action admissions policy was unconstitutional.
Only 19 first-year black students enrolled at Harvard Law School this year, or 3.4 percent of the class, according to data from the American Bar Association
Roberts was joined in the majority opinion by Republican-appointed justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito, Clarence Thomas, Neil Gorsuch, and Brett Kavanaugh. The court’s liberal justices Ketanji Brown Jackson, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan dissented
They also ruled 6-2 – with liberal justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused – that Harvard’s admission policy should also be struck down in decision sending shockwaves nationwide.
The ruling ended the decades-old ‘affirmative action’ policy that was designed to boost the number of black and Hispanic students in colleges.
Universities will have to look to new ways to better incorporate minority groups and ensure representation among student bodies.
‘Because Harvard’s and UNC’s admissions programs 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, those admissions programs cannot be reconciled with the guarantees of the Equal Protection Clause,’ states the majority opinion written by Chief Justice John Roberts.
