Opinion Piece:
Sometimes, however, bad facts highlight the need for better law. On Thursday, the Supreme Court ruled that, in the case of college admissions, the bad facts of racial discrimination created the necessity of a new standard. The defendant, Harvard, had repeatedly undermined its own case for race-conscious affirmative action, and the court's new precedent outlaws racial discrimination in admissions while still preserving the state's ability to respond to the legacy of past injustice...

... First, the evidence is overwhelming that Harvard actively discriminated against Asian applicants. As Chief Justice John Roberts notes in his majority opinion, a Black student in the fourth-lowest academic decile had a higher chance of admission to Harvard than an Asian student in the top decile...

...s Chief Justice Roberts makes clear, the University of North Carolina ' which was a defendant in a separate case about its admissions process ' also imposed far tougher admission standards on Asian students. Compounding the injustice, Asian Americans were already historically marginalized. As Justice Clarence Thomas details in his concurrence, 'Asian Americans can hardly be described as the beneficiaries of historical racial advantages.'

... The top-line answer is simple, but the consequences are complicated. The court struck down the use of race as a factor in college admissions, but it left in place a number of alternative admissions measures that can both increase diversity and address real injustice. First, as Justice Thomas explains, 'Even today, nothing prevents the states from according an admissions preference to identified victims of discrimination.' In such a case, the preference is related to a specific injustice.

nytimes.com - Affirmative action supreme court harvard