Biden "Strongly" Disagrees With Supreme Court's Affirmative Action Decision

President Biden delivered remarks at the White House on Thursday after the Supreme Court ruled against the race-conscious admission policies of Harvard College and the University of North Carolina, rejecting affirmative action in higher education in a decision with nationwide ramifications.

Related Story: The Supreme Court Strikes Down Affirmative Action In College Admissions

"The court has effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions, and I strongly, strongly disagree with the court's decision," the president said Thursday.

The court's 6-3 ruling in the University of North Carolina case was along ideological lines, and the court ruled 6-2 in the Harvard case, with Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recusing herself. The court's ruling comes just a day before the Supreme Court is expected to rule on the constitutionality of Mr. Biden's student loan forgiveness program.

"For 45 years, the United States Supreme Court has recognized colleges' freedom to decide how, how to build diverse student bodies and to meet their responsibility of opening doors of opportunity for every single American," the president said. "In case after case ... the court has affirmed and reaffirmed this view — that colleges could use race, not as a determining factor for admission, but as one of the factors among many in deciding who to admit from an already qualified pool of applicants. Today, the court once again walked away from decades of precedent, as the dissent has made clear."

Mr. Biden has long expressed support for affirmative action, and his administration urged the Supreme Court to decline to hear Harvard's case. The president on Thursday sought to explain his administration's point of view.

"Many people wrongly believe that affirmative action allows unqualified students — unqualified students — to be admitted ahead of qualified students," he said. "This is not, this is not how college admissions work. Rather, colleges set out standards for admission, and every student, every student, has to meet those standards. Then, and only then, after first meeting the qualifications required by the school, do colleges look at other factors, in addition to their grades, such as race."

The court's ruling is dismaying to many Democratic politicians, on the heels of other Supreme Court losses.

"In its dedication to moving backwards, the Supreme Court has once again rolled back protections for people in marginalized communities across this country," Rep. Cori Bush, a Black Missouri Democrat, said Thursday. "Ending affirmative action in higher education — which the court had already held to be legal — will have devastating impacts on our communities. Universities have historically denied Black, brown, and Indigenous people from accessing institutions of higher education. Affirmative action helped level the racist and uneven playing field."

Former first lady Michelle Obama, a graduate of Princeton University and Harvard University Law School, issued a lengthy statement Thursday.

"So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level," she wrote. "So today, my heart breaks for any young person out there who's wondering what their future holds — and what kinds of chances will be open to them."