Okay, I'm a little bit confused here because I evidently didn't understand what these two cases were about. So maybe someone can help a brother out here....
From everything I've seen -- and I've only scanned the opinion itself but it seems to back this up -- affirmative action in college admissions was invalidated as a violation of the 14th Amendment. But, the 14th Amendment by its own terms only applies to state actors -- i.e., the government. So exactly how does this decision eliminate race-based preferences at private schools...like Harvard? I didn't see any discussion of that in the decision, though it is admittedly quite long and as I said, I just scanned it.
It was my understanding that these were two separate cases, with the UNC case being a 14th Amendment case applicable to state schools, and the Harvard case being a Civil Rights Act case applicable to private schools. But I haven't seen any mention of the CRA in the Harvard discussion -- just more 14th Amendment stuff.
So...can someone explain this to me?
In any event, even if it is just a 14th Amendment decision, it is still huge because it will necessarily apply to race-based preferences of all kind at all levels of government. And that's just huge.