The Supreme Court on Thursday struck down race-conscious student admissions programs used at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. This ruling was a sharp setback to affirmative action policies that many institutions of higher education, corporations, and military leaders have long backed in an effort to create a diverse student population and talent pool that can bring a range of perspectives to the workplace and U.S. armed forces ranks.

The ruling was enabled by the Supreme Court's conservative majority, which has shifted rightward since the 2016 ruling in the University of Texas case involving a white student who was rejected for admission. The court was asked to overturn a key precedent that allowed colleges to consider race as one factor in the admissions process.The justices ruled 6-3 in favor of Students for Fair Admissions, a group founded by anti-affirmative action activist Edward Blum, in its appeal of lower court rulings upholding the Harvard and UNC policies. The court found that the schools did not do enough to explore alternatives to race-based admissions decisions.

Justice Elena Kagan wrote a dissent on the decision. Critics of affirmative action policies have argued that they are discriminatory and no longer needed because America has moved beyond racist policies of the past such as segregation and is becoming increasingly diverse. Harvard and UNC have said they use race as only one factor in a host of individualized evaluations for admission without quotas, and that curbing its consideration would cause a significant drop in enrollment of students from under-represented groups. According to Harvard, around 40% of U.S. colleges and universities consider race in some fashion. The Supreme Court's ruling Thursday was a major blow to affirmative action policies, which have withstood Supreme Court scrutiny for decades and are used to remedy racial inequity and exclusion in American life.