As the Supreme Court prepares to hear two related cases that could re-shape or ban affirmative action in America, New York University’s Steinhardt Institute for Higher Education Policy convened a panel of experts to discuss the legal battle and what might happen next.
The cases, challenging race-conscious admissions practices at Harvard and the University of North Carolina (UNC), were filed by Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a non-profit organization that seeks to eliminate race as a factor in college acceptances. The Harvard lawsuit argues that the university is applying a soft racial quota to Asian-Americans by systematically rating them lower in evaluations of personal traits in comparison to other racial and ethnic groups. This, the suit says, has kept the percentage of Asian-Americans in Harvard’s undergraduate classes consistent, even as more Asian-Americans have applied.
In the UNC case, SFFA is challenging an admissions policy that factors in race which it says disadvantages Asian-American and white applicants. SFFA argues that UNC did not prove that using a race-neutral alternative would have caused a large drop in academic quality or in the educational benefits of a diverse student body.
The panelists differed in their views of the cases’ prospects before a Supreme Court with a 6-3 conservative majority. 
Dr. Mike Hoa Nguyen, assistant professor of education at Steinhardt Institute of Higher Education Policy
Although he described himself as “anxious” about the ruling, Dr. Mike Hoa Nguyen, an assistant professor of education at Steinhardt, said that stranger things have happened than a ruling that upholds affirmative action.
Dr. Ann Marcus, director of the Steinhardt Institute and the panel’s moderator, agreed that a surprising result was possible. She remembered wide-spread pessimism during the Supreme Court’s last affirmative action case, 2015’s Fisher v. Texas, but noted that the court upheld race-conscious admissions.
For Dr. Stella Flores, an associate professor in the department of educational leadership and policy at the University of Texas at Austin, the outlook was gloomier.
