What The Supreme Court’s Decision On Affirmative Action Means For Employers
The U.S. Supreme Court struck down affirmative action admissions policies on June 29th at UNC and Harvard on the grounds that they violated the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.
The court effectively overturned the 2003 ruling Grutter v. Bollinger, in which the court said race could be considered as a factor in the admissions process because universities had a compelling interest in maintaining diverse campuses. In doing so the court scrapped decades of precedent including one ruling dating to 1978 that upheld a limited consideration of race in university admissions as a way to combat historic discrimination against Black people and other minorities.
This decision is still fresh, but it’s worth considering what this could mean for overall DE&I efforts at work. It could hinder an organization’s ability to build out more diverse talent pipelines, which will have a cultural ripple effect on the organization as a whole.
The ruling means universities cannot use race to pursue diversity initiatives—which is something employers have never been able to do—so there shouldn’t be any direct implications to businesses’ hiring practices or internal diversity efforts, but some experts have speculated the decision will have a “chilling effect” on businesses that will grow concerned about lawsuits against diverse hiring practices and initiatives to improve diversity.
Alvin Tillery, a political science professor and director of Northwestern’s Center for the Study of Diversity and Democracy, told Forbes those lawsuits will surely come, but expects companies will still be able “to set targets and baseline goals around diversifying their workplace.”
It’s also prudent to think about how this could impact the org chart, particularly from a DE&I perspective. In a piece for Fast Company, Amira Barger argues that DE&I shouldn’t answer to HR, because DE&I is meant to address issues and structures that go far beyond the scope of an HR department. She goes on to say that DE&I can’t be viewed through the lens of HR, because DE&I focuses on systems that originate outside an organization.
This Supreme Court decision is still new, and it’ll be a while before we see the fallout from it, but we should keep an eye on how it might impact diversity benchmarks and enterprise actions going forward.
