In a torrid disagreement, Sotomayor says that “the devastating impact of this decision cannot be overstated.”

Sonia Sotomayor, one of three liberal justices on the Supreme Court, said in her dissenting opinion on the Harvard case that the court turned its back on 45 years of case law promoting more inclusive and equal schools, and that “the devastating impact of this decision cannot be stressed enough.”

“Today this Court stands in the way and ends decades of precedent and momentous progress,” she wrote, adding that the decision “affirms a superficial rule of color blindness as a constitutional principle in an endemic segregated society where race has always existed.” has mattered and continues to matter.”

The decision, she wrote, “undermines the constitutional guarantee of equal protection by further entrenching racial inequality in education, the bedrock of our democratic government and pluralistic society.”

Judge Sotomayor argued that the majority view of race neutrality “will entrench racial segregation in higher education because racial inequality will persist as long as it is ignored”.

But despite her scathing language, Judge Sotomayor ended on a defiant note, writing that despite the court’s actions, “society’s progress toward equality cannot be stopped permanently.”

“The push for racial diversity will continue,” she wrote. “While the Court has banned almost all forms of race in university admissions, universities can and should continue to use all available tools to meet society’s need for diversity in education.”

Another liberal judge, Ketanji Brown Jackson, wrote in her dissenting opinion that “it would be most unfortunate if the Equal Protection Clause were to demand this perverse, ahistorical, and counterproductive outcome.”

“To impose this result in the name of that clause when no such thing is required, and thereby hinder our collective progress towards the full realization of the clause’s promise, is truly a tragedy for all of us,” she wrote.

Both Judge Sotomayor and Judge Jackson criticized the majority for making an exception for military academies. Justice Jackson wrote that the majority concluded that “racial diversity in higher education is worth preserving potential only to the extent it might be necessary to prepare black Americans and other underrepresented minorities for success in the bunker, not the boardroom.”