it is 10:00 eastern, great to have you with us today. i'm ana cabrera reporting from new york. let's get right to the breaking news at the supreme court. at any moment, we will get new decisions and because today is

the last scheduled decision day of the term, we could finally get some answers on some massive undecided cases. rulings on affirmative action, student loan forgiveness, and lgbtq+ rights among others. decisions that could impact all of us, and they could come down at any minute, and we have a full lineup of guests and experts on this. i want to begin with nbc news correspondent julia ainsley who's standing by at the supreme court for us. julia, set the scene there, how might this go down? >> reporter: well, you're right, this is the last scheduled day, ana, but we're expecting another day possibly to get on the court's schedule for tomorrow. that would leave just two days left in june when they typically wrap up their term, and they have these three huge decisions left. so doing the math, we expect at least one of those big decisions to come today, either when it comes to religious rights versus free speech, religious rights and lgbt rights. of course affirmative action, and how they apply versus to public or private colleges and

to student loans, that $20,000 forgiveness plan from the biden administration, will that be allowed to stand? these are huge decisions right now inside the court. reporters are lining up to get those decisions as they come down. we don't know what it's supposed to be. in the past, you would have seen the running of the interns. that would be people running out with those papers to the cameras. now they're mainly posted online. anyone who wants to see this, you can go to the supreme court website, keep clicking refresh, just like we are here, and we'll hear it first from our reporters inside. i've got a producer stander aside, we will be on the air with the breakdown as soon as we get them, ana. >> we know you will come back to us shortly. let's go to our panel right now as we await these major decisions. msnbc law and politics analyst dahlia lithwick is with us, eddie glaude, professor of african american studies at princeton university is here, and our msnbc legal analyst civil rights attorney charles

coleman and manhattan district attorney, catherine christian. it is literally the end of june, just a couple of days left. we still have multiple major decisions. >> yes. >> what does that tell you? >> it tells me that the super majority that the conservatives have had on this court has not necessarily been able to come forward and make the types of decisions that we expected, and i think that we saw that with the voting rights cases, both of them that have come down during this term. now, while that may in some cases seem to be a sign of encouragement, i don't necessarily want us to get too excited for those who are hoping for, for example, the continuation of affirmative action. it has been on its last leg for a very long time, and i think that everything that we have seen from this court since dobbs tells us that the supermajority is going to find a way to do what it is that they want to do at the end of the day. we are all watching with bateed breath. it's going to be a very

interesting day. >> i just got word, we got one of the big ones, the harvard affirmative action case. we don't have the answers just yet. we're going to read in real quick, let julia do what she needs to do, our laura jarrett is reading the opinion as well. what's going through your mind right now, katherine? >> that's a big one, and before we started i asked charles what law school he went to, he went to howard. i had a different experience, it was me sonia, and bob, three black students in my graduating class in law school in 1988. love my law school, but that's not a good thing, and they've now increased black student population, and if this decision comes out a way that it shouldn't, depending on your political beliefs, then you're going to go back to a three-person, black person class in a class of 200, and that's just not a good thing. >> let me bring in dahlia lithwick, and you've covered the supreme court extensively, dahlia. what can we tell our viewers about this particular case? what do we know? set the scene in terms of the background?

what got us here? >> on the affirmative action cases. >> correct, specifically against harvard is the one we understand we're getting a decision on today. >> ana, it looks as though the court has actually held that both harvard and unc, so in both cases, one as regards to private schools, the other public, that they violate the 14th amendment equal protection clause. so this looks like it's going to be a big, big swing. i'm just only starting to look at the opinion. the answer to the broader question how we got here is that the court very recently upheld affirmative action in higher education. what changed is justice anthony kennedy stepped down, justice brett kavanaugh came onto the court as did justice amy coney barrett. so the case comes back not because anything on the ground has changed, the composition of the court has changed. and if in fact, the holding that the chief justice has handed down is that harvard and unc's admission programs violate the

equal protection clause, then i think at minimum we can say that this is really going to fundamentally change the possibility of using race conscious affirmative action in higher education. >> eddie glaude, you're with us. your thoughts if indeed affirmative action is now banned nationwide from the college admission process, what is the impact? >> well, you know, to be honest with you, we will return to elite institutions, more specifically being the space for a particular population, predominantly white and asian students. we will begin to see a kind of segregated higher education landscape, and the irony, of course, as i try to -- i've an anticipated this decision, i'm trying to manage my emotions, but you know, this was just one

remedy, affirmative action, the only remedy to the legacy of discrimination in admissions in american higher education. only one remedy. and so here they've taken it away, and so where we find ourselves is we're going to go back to those classes where you had one, two, three. we're already having a small percentage of black and brown students in elite institutions, that percentage will get even smaller. >> charles, i know you have a thought. our julia ainsley had a chance to look over the decision. what do we know at this point? >> reporter: that's right, affirmative action has been blocked both for private and public colleges. this is in the unc case and in the harvard case. we thought there may be a split where they might say that it's unconstitutional for public universities taking public money, but perhaps not for private, but they've said in both cases, college admissions cannot consider race as they try to diversify their student

bodies. this is overturning a 2003 opinion by then justice sotomayor who said at that time we hope in 25 years we won't have to look at race as a consideration in college, but that's just not the makeup of our country right now. it's been 20 years, and these justices have said that the -- according to this opinion today, that they think that race should no longer be a consideration as colleges try to diversify. going back to oral arguments we heard then from chief justice roberts saying, look, it is -- we basically saw it as being more racist in violation of title 14 to look at race in considering who should be admitted to college. harvard tried to argue this is just like trying to get an oboe player on our orchestra, we would look out for oboe players. we didn't have a civil war over oboe players and we did over

race. this will have historic impacts going forward as colleges try to diverse their student bodies, looking at any adversity students have overcome. they can no longer look at race. it's something already hang in eight states across the country. the public system in california, they cannot look at race there. a lot of colleges have said it's been increasingly hard to keep their student bodies racially diverse, hard to underestimate how big of a decision this is coming from the supreme court today. it may not be surprising given the composition of the court, but it will have long and lasting impacts on how colleges around the country diversify their student bodies without looking at race as a factor. >> there is still so much more for us to dissect in this opinion, obviously. charles, your thoughts on the top line, affirmative action no longer constitutional according to the supreme court justices. >> ana, we've been headed to this space for a very long time, and unfortunately there is a

tie-in between the public discourse right now around diversity and everything that we are discussing, the misunderstanding of how race is actually used and discussed, and then a very disingenuous conversation about race in america, all of which has contributed to us being where we are. i share eddie's feelings about knowing this was coming but also being emotional about it now that we are actually hearing those words. and to julia's point, what she was just talking about, we have already seen in california, for example, what it does to a student body to remove race from a factor of admissions. it has not worked out well. we have seen fewer and fewer black students in the uc systems because of the removal of race as a factor in terms of being able to identify qualified applicants who can be there. >> but explain that, explain that because i think a lot of people think you're either qualified or you're not. why does race even matter. i think that's what the justices are saying here, right? >> race does matter because in

many respects, there are a number of myriad different considerations that come into play when you're talking about the experience of an applicant who is black, who comes from certain areas, who had certain advantages or was void of certain advantages, going into a college application process versus someone who did not come from that background and did not have these advantages. and it is not -- from what people have still -- even from 1978 people still misunderstand affirmative action. it has nothing to do with quotas. it has nothing to do with numbers. i have to go back to dahlia's piece that dahlia wrote earlier, one of the fatal flaws of how we got here is a decision that came, i believe it was fisher, where they said basically in 25 years they put a sell by date essentially. those are dahlia's words. >> 2028. >> i want to give her full credit for writing that, and basically saying, hey, well,

perhaps we can revisit here. as soon as that decision came out, that date began to be marked on the calendar and people said, well, we can get here at this point. the problem with that, ana -- >> hey, guys, got to interrupt. we have our laura jarrett who's going to break down the decision for us right now. laura, what can you tell us? >> the network side will be joining us in just one second here. here she comes. >> that's exactly right, we have major decision here as it relates to race and education in this country. as you said, for decades, the court has said that you can look at race as a limited plus factor, a tip if you will, not in a checking the box exercise, and here in this case a divided court has said the programs at

harvard and the university of north carolina are invalid. now, those are important because those are ones that many schools base their programs on, and so the upshot here for schools as they try to sort their way through a deeply divided court, an opinion spanning over 200 pages here is to try to sort through what exactly is left. it's clear that if a student feels that race has impacted their life in a deep and meaningful individualistic way, they could write an essay about that, and the court for a long time has said that schools can use diversity, the educational benefits of diversity as a legitimate goal, and it does not appear the court is taking that away but to the extent that harvard and the university of north carolina and other schools have been going about it in a way that is not as narrowly tailored as this court believes it should be, those programs will no longer be invalid. but i have to say, again, it a's

complicated opinion. it's going to take a while for the colleges and universities around the country to figure out what exactly is left, if anything, of their programs and how exactly they're going to have to try to now sort through what they can do to comply with the law going forward. but what is clear here is that the headline is those colleges and universities programs are invalid. this is sea change. this is the first time we have seen anything like this. >> so that was our laura jarrett breaking down the opinion and what we know. i'm still curious as to what the breakdown on the supreme court was and which justices are choosing to join the majority and which are dissenting and what those dissents look like. the bottom line is this is now going to affect universities nationwide, public and private universities. the thing that i don't understand is there was precedent, right? we had the 2016 ruling. >> we had roe v. wade was precedent too. and that was overruled. >> in this case, the issue of

affirmative action on college campuses has been before the supreme court over multiple decades. you mentioned back in the 1970s it came up again in 2003, the big case, greta versus bollinger, in which the supreme court ruled race could be considered as a factor in the admissions process because universities had a compelling interest in maintaining campus diversity. it came up in 2016 at the university of texas. every time the supreme court has ruled in favor of the universities with their admission practices. what's different this time? >> well, the difference is 6-3. i don't know what the lineup is for this, but you now have six conservative judges. the same thing that happened with roe v. wade. now it's our turn, we get to do what we want to do. let me just add, the reason why affirmative action is a good thing, it is not preferential. it's you're bringing diverse opinions to the table. what charles and i are bringing to this conversation today is very different than what white former federal prosecutors would

be bringing to you today. so it's just the timing that you happen to have these two black former prosecutors here. so it's a sea change because what's going to happen, as charles said, which happened in california, we're not going to take race into account anymore in our public colleges and everything will be fine, is as -- and as you see that is not happening. it is not preferential. race is one factor. there were only three black people in my law school graduating class, and that probably was affirmative action. but now that schools no longer have to consider race, you know, i fear what will happen and what -- will there be many lawyers that look like charles and i in the future or doctors or accountants. it's not preferential treatment. >> i think people have to understand the far reaching effects of a decision like this

because of the access and opportunity afforded to an individual based off an education. you have an opportunity to be set up for a particular job and career path. all of those things, earnings potential, where you can live, what you can afford in terms of building a family and having access to this quote, unquote american dream. all of this in many respects is contingent on your access to a quality education. when you are limiting that, particularly in many respects based off of a misunderstanding or a disingenuous conversation about race, what you're doing is you are limiting people's access to the american dream, and that is something that we have not really been honest about in our discussion. part of why we've gotten so far in this conversation that's pushed back against affirmative action so long is because we haven't been honest about where we are as a country in terms of

race. and the fact that as eddie talked about early on, what is likely to occur is we are going to now see a very steep and significant divide in terms of access and who is able to really get into these spaces in terms of elite universities, people who would be able to get in there and thrive and do well and excel, and now we're going to see that segregation become wider and wider because it's going to take a while as laura already talked about for us to figure out what does this mean and how does this work. and the biggest problem with this entire discussion is you're taking affirmative action away, but you're not replacing it with anything. >> how have these other states that already have banned affirmative action programs implemented that? i think that could provide a road perhaps for the rest of the country. is there an alternative that some states that you know of have been able to -- >> how do you diversify without taking race into account?

what are you diversifying? are you diversifying people's income? clarence thomas, you know, he has criticized affirmative action. that's how -- that's one of the reasons why he graduated from yale and we know that's one of the reasons why he's on the supreme court. so someone like -- >> isn't part of his argument you're not giving enough credit to people of color. they can accomplish what it is you're saying affirmative action is intended to help -- >> the problem with that argue is the issue is not the credit being given to people of color, the issue is on the decision-makers side. that's the problem. the problem is never about whether people are qualified. the issue is whether those qualifications are going to be judged properly by people who are making decisions in such a way that is going to allow the continued access to these spaces by people who have been historically denied them. >> let me expand the conversation, i want to bring in nbc news correspondent antonia hylton, who ises at harvard university. that is one of the schools

involved directly in the cases at hand, and what are you hearing, what kind of reaction is happening there? >> reporter: well, ana, the majority of the students i've spoken to -- and i've been in conversation with them for weeks leading up to this moment. they are reeling. they are devastated and they're worried about what the culture, what the makeup of their classes, the future generations coming up behind them at harvard, what they're going to look like in the future. you know, many of them have been dreading this moment for a long time now because it was clear from the very earliest stages of this lawsuit that it was going to wind its way up slowly to the supreme court and that this result was likely. so they've had time emotionally to prepare for it, but what i'm hearing is that it still feels like a gut punch for many of them, and their concerns are rooted in, you know, reality. you take a look at what happened in the california system and what students point to is that you look at that system more than two decades ago, they got -- they did away with affirmative action, and then their elite colleges, part of the uc system saw about a 50%

drop in minority admissions. keep in mind, these are public universities that all families, all communities in the state of california pay into, and then you saw this drastic reduction in access from minority families, not just black families, but latino families, and then here on harvard's campus, just this spring, the upcoming class, the kids who found out this spring they were going to be future harvard students this coming fall. we saw a drop in admissions of black, latino, native american, and native hawaiian students, and that is before this decision came out. these are the things that are fueling students' concerns right now. when you talk to kids, you know, it's conflicting, right? they want to imagine that these work arounds might still work. the uc system tried those work arounds as well, and they're still struggling every year to get minority enrollment back up. what they're also seeing is not just that those students are being rejected but lower numbers of minorities are even applying to those schools, even imagining

themselves as being part of the campus. so the concern is that it's going to be hard, right, to even quantify the impacts here. you know, how do you measure people who would have applied to harvard but now are afraid to, who would have imagined themselves at columbia or brown or unc but are now going to be worried that their application isn't going to get a second look. take a listen to a conversation that i had with one student here. she's actually a high schooler who is incredibly talented, likely going to be applying to colleges and universities like this one. she kind of walked through some of her conflicting emotions. take a listen. >> i think that is a little bit conflicting, especially when you're like i've worked so hard my whole life to get to this point, and i don't want my racial identity to stop me from, you know, becoming who i want to be. so then on the flip side to that, i feel like some racial minorities or identities on groups of people have had harder

experiences in america and are not given the same opportunities as other majority groups. >> reporter: among experts, there's really no doubt right now that this is going to fundamentally reshape access and what it looks and feels like on elite college campuses. like harvard where there were periods in history at which minorities of any background really struggled to get access or were very explicitly barred from being able to be part of courses, women barred from being able to be part of the community here, and so there's that legacy here to grapple with. administrate university administrators and faculty have been planning for this moment. there are a lot of back door conversations happening right now about what kinds of tools, whether it's income or doing away with standardized testing, what are going to use to make our campuses diverse. >> stand by if you will, i want to bring in derrick johnson, president and ceo of the naacp, and derrick, your reaction to this news that the supreme court has essentially said race cannot

be explicitly considered in the college admission process anymore? >> well, it's an unfortunate footnote in this supreme court's legacy. the worst thing about affirmative action is that it created a clarence thomas who benefitted from the program and now is in a position where he's going to deny many young african american talented individuals an opportunity. historically the problem has been institutions of higher learning, corporations, companies and other entities have denied well-qualified african americans and other individuals access in terms of admissions, employment because of their race, and we were affirming the actions of past wrong deeds to ensure that we have a diverse population and not an apartheid reality in the united states. this is an unfortunate situation for the citizens of this country as we participate in a global reality. we're no longer participating in

a myopic alabama or mississippi segregated reality. we are in a global reality where the globe looked more diverse than what people want to recognize. we cannot as a nation continue down this track. >> we're still reading the opinion and we'll get more from our laura jarrett and julia ainsley on those specifics, but one of the things that came up during the oral arguments back in october that sort of signaled the conservative justices were leaning this drebs direction was a quote from justice alito in which he asked, what do you learn from merely checking the box? you know, we who have filled out these college applications know what he's talking about. it asks for your race or ethnicity, you check the box. you have to do an essay as part of the admissions process. how do you answer his question, derrick? >> what we learn is a diverse setting allows for the individuals from many

communities to participate in opportunities to bring forth some of the most creative minds that this nation has ever seen in a way in which race is not a factor to bar opportunity, that race is celebrated, that diversity is celebrated, that cultural uniqueness is celebrated so that we can have a more perfect union, a society that looks more inclusive like the demographics and less like a 1950 reality in which people are trying to run us back to. >> i think we still have dahlia lithwick with us, and i have to ask you, dahlia, what do we know about this group that brought the cases? because i understand they have been trying to overturn affirmative action and bar affirmative action from college admissions processes for years. this is students for fair admissions. >> this is exactly the same group. it's one very, very invested, very wealthy opponent of affirmative action, edward bloom who brought the abigail fisher

case and did not succeed several years ago. so just brought it again, this time under the guise of not claiming that affirmative action necessarily harms white students but trying to make the case that affirmative action harms asian students thinking that that might be a better way in. it's worth saying that the lower court actually found almost no evidence of that claim. there's a lengthy, lengthy district court finding that that's simply not borne out and it's not affirmative action programs that are harming asian students. but as i said earlier, it almost doesn't matter what the nature of the claim was. the point was the composition of the court was now receptive to it. >> and now i understand that the break down was 6-3 for the unc case, 6-2 for the harvard case. if i am reading this correctly.

explain why there's a different number there, dahlia. >> yeah, it's pretty simple, justice ketanji brown jackson sat on the board of overseers of harvard, and so when this case came up to the court, she chose to recuse herself so that she essentially is not that third vote against. i should note here and i think everybody's said it, this is 237 pages of opinions. it's going to take us a couple of days to digest it, but she wrote a dissent not in the harvard case, whereas we noted she didn't vote. she wrote a dissent in the unc case that could peel paint. it is extraordinary tour de force. >> you know, it's interesting because there was a may poll done by the "associated press" and norc, they found 63% of americans believe the supreme court should not block colleges from considering race or ethnicity, and here that's the outcome. i want to bring in eugene robinson, a "washington post" columnist and msnbc political

analyst. look at that public opinion, eugene, is here once again you have the supreme court acting in a way that is not with the tide of the american people. >> no, that's right. i mean, this is a court that does not care in that way about public opinion, and this is a court that has telegraphed this decision for some time. it seemed they were heading in this direction. john roberts has been hostile, frankly, to the idea of affirmative action. he was hostile toward even the voting rights act until the recent decision, which made a lot of people wonder whether that signaled a shift back in the other direction for this court, and the answer was no. the answer is that this court has affirmative action in

college admissions decisions, and i think what we'll all be puzzling over for the next few days, frankly, is how broad is this? how far beyond the college admissions process does this decision go? because, you know, speaking narrowly for african americans, we had, what, 350 years of slavery, discrimination, jim crow, segregation, and then not quite really 50 years of halfhearted affirmative action. and now that apparently is over. >> i think i heard an audible groan from one of our other guests who are joining us. was that you eddie glaude or derrick johnson? >> i mean, look -- affirmative action -- >> i'm sorry, derrick, go ahead. >> no, you go ahead. >> affirmative action must be understood as a remedy to the historical legacy or at least a partial remedy to the historical

legacy of racial discrimination. so here we are now, just a few years, not long, hasn't done much in some ways. it's been successful to a certain degree for a certain sliver of folks. now we might as well say it's dead. what do we do next? what was the world like before affirmative action? what we do know is hbcus did its job, morehead, spellman, prairie view. they did their work in the face of a landscape that denied black and brown students access to quality education. what we need to do in response to the supreme court's decision in this moment, where are we going to invest our dollars? how are we going to invest in public education so that all americans will have access? because what we saw in california was that once they made this decision, only certain folk could get access to berkeley. only certain folks could get access to ucla, other folks were in riverside. part of what we have to do is figure out how we're going to

respond in this landscape. i want to say we did it before and we shall do it again. >> i keep coming back to this conversation about really understanding where we are around race in america and one of the reasons why that's so imperative is that we won't ever fix this or get to a space where we're talking about equal access ask equal outcomes, not just equal opportunity until we can have that conversation. and when i say that -- what i'm referring to is the idea that, number one, our experiences do not bring something of value to the table. there's been that conversation to begin with to say, well, what does checking a box mean. well, one of the things that you can learn by checking a box is that when you come from a place where you have not had substantive interaction with someone who does not look like you, you have the opportunity to bridge the gap and create greater understanding. you have the opportunity to learn from people that you

otherwise would not learn from. on this panel you have a black ph.d.. you have three black attorneys. you have black field reporters and journalists who otherwise would not have had these opportunities but for affirmative action and the opportunities that it afforded us, even as someone who went to an hbcu, i can recognize that paving the way for people to be able to go to elite institutions has a broader benefit for society and the notion that somehow taking race into consideration is taking a slot away from someone else, that is one of the biggest myths and lies that is not supported by the data that has been used to advance this conversation in the public discourse, and we have to deal with those myths in order to change the tenor of this conversation. >> we're all people of color here at this table right now, i think we all have a personal feeling a gut reaction, one of the things that came up in that

argument that stood out to me was from justice sonia sotomayor. she said sometimes race does correlate to some experiences and not others. she says if you're black, you're more likely to be in an under resourced school. you're more likely to be taught as by teachers who are not as qualified as others. those are some of the obstacles some people of color are up against when it comes to having the kind of academic success and opportunity that others may otherwise have. let's go back to julia ainsley. you've been working hard to try to read through this opinion. what are you learning? >> reporter: it's right in a 6-3 decision for harvard -- 6-2 decision for harvard and 6-3 decision for unc the justices are ending affirmative action as we know it. chief justice roberts puts this a lot of caveats on ways that schools can continue to try to bring people of color into their student bodies.

by looking at things like their essay. he's saying, look, if someone has encountered adversity are where they've had to find courage because of their race, they should absolutely write about that in their essays when applying to college. it's just that race shouldn't be considered on the college application as a factor on its own. so there are a lot of factors where they're trying to bring in other ways that student bodies can continue to look at, whether it be socioeconomic diversity or the way race impacts a student or applicant's life. and that i find over and over in his opinion. i also just wanted to point out how many people wrote on this. it was justice thomas writing the majority. we also saw gorsuch and kavanaugh concur and write their own opinions, and then we saws dissent from sotomayor and chief justice jackson wrote her own dissent, of course just in the unc case because she is recused from the harvard case. a lot of people with a lot of opinions adding onto this. there was another piece in the

concurring opinion i saw from justice thomas where he says the argument from unc that says that they needed to have a more racially diverse student body because that is what will educate people by bringing them together to live together. in other words, that communal experience when you're living on a college campus, that's so important that that be diverse when you're training the next -- the next generation of young leaders. what justice thomas says is that's not an educational reason. that's a social reason. we're talking about education. and i imagine a lot of people you have sitting there with you will tell you that's absolutely part of someone's education. but just another piece that i wanted to point out as they're breaking down the various arguments that they heard to keep affirmative action and why they decided to go in this direction. but yes, there are plenty of ways that they say it is still okay to look at someone's race in terms of how it may have impacted their lives and what brings them to be a special applicant as they applied. that should be included in the application process. but i think it's safe to say affirmative action as we know it

has ended today and this morning. >> as we learn more here, derrick johnson, what are you thinking? >> was what was just described is a land mine of lawsuits, a lack of clarity for institutions to move forward. it really is a chilling effect on what institutions are willing to risk in this moment. but institutions must take the risk to ensure diversity for the future work force, diversity for future leaders because if we don't, we're going to start seeing a rapid diminishing return on our educational outcomes in terms of the quality of leadership. the beautiful thing about the diversity of this country is the diversity of this country and we must embrace it. the worst thing about this country is we have denied some of the most talented, visionary folks that i have ever met come from zip codes who have been denied k through 12, who have

been denied access to work force, who have been denied exposure and now we have a supreme court that's saying that institutions -- do so at your own risk. yes, there are other ways you can get there, we're not going to give you any instruction on how to do so, but if you go in this direction, beware you will be sued. that's what this court -- >> okay. he froze unfortunately. we'll work to get him back, but dahlia, just to be clear, did the justices leave open any door for any consideration of race in the application process? >> yeah, i think exactly what julia said is true. they're trying to say, look, we can still have a fulsome conversation about, you know, your racial background. it's going to have to be not in

a check box. it's going to have to surface in an essay that you write. it's going to have to show up in some other way. but i also think -- i want to point out because this is so important, the dissent that justice jackson wrote is putting on a clinic about the history of the idea of color blindness in america. it is so essential to her that when the chief justice writes, quote, eliminating racial discrimination means eliminating all of it, and if that sounds familiar to folks, that was his line in a seattle school case where he said the way to get beyond race is to get beyond race. his view is we, you know, set the clock on color blindness now. justice jackson goes through the ways in which -- i mean, she talks about sharecropping, red lining, jim crow, the gi bill,

all the ways in which racism was baked into the history of this country and the ways in which you can't just flip a switch and say now that's all fixed and so we can be color blind. and the examples she brings are so powerful in terms of saying she has this gorgeous line, ana, where she says history speaks in some form. it can be heard forever, and her point is that you can't simply say that none of that, centuries of historic discrimination and degradation can be done away with by saying now we're all cool? everybody moving forward can be color blind. it is really an impressive piece of writing. >> i want to quote more of her dissent, and i don't know if we have this in a graphic that we can put up, guys, if we do, please do that. but i quote, our country has never been color blind. this is from justice jackson. she says given the lengthy history of state-sponsored race-based preferences in

america, to say that anyone is now victimized if a college considers whether that legacy of discrimination has unequally advantaged its applicant fails to acknowledges the inequality that still plagues our citizenry. it is that inequality that admissions programs help to address to the benefit of all of us. the majority's judgment stunts that progress without any basis in law, history, logic, or justice. i dissent. that was justice jackson, again, dissenting specifically in the unc case. she abstained from participating in the harvard case because of her direct connections to that school. everybody, stay with me i want to bring in a couple of voices in the education sphere. john king jr., a former u.s. education secretary under former president obama. he is chancellor of the state university of morning and becky pringle, president of the national education association.

first to you, mr. secretary. your reaction to this ruling and what you see as the impact moving forward? >> look, it's heartbreaking for our democracy. our democracy is stronger when our leadership is diverse, and moving to a place where selective institutions do not have the tool of race conscious admissions means that we will see fewer black and latino students in those institutions. we will see fewer black and la tee know students prepared for leadership roles whether it's in government, business, the military. it's now incumbent on us in the higher education sector to do everything we can to preserve a commitment to diversity, equity, and inclusion. we certainly at the state university of new york will continue to send a message that there's a place for every student at suny, and we will use every tool, socioeconomic

diversity, first gen students. we will look carefully at students' essays and how they talk about overcoming diversity. for us it will continue to be a priority to make sure our student body reflects the state of new york. >> what do you think about this, becky? how much of an uphill climb is it now if this affirmative action program goes away from a university to actually have a diverse student body in every sense of that word diversity. >> just like your other panelists have said already, the headline for today is access and opportunity denied. we know that we are stronger. our schools are stronger, our communities are stronger, the country is stronger when we have spaces that reflect all of the diversity of this country. it's what makes us strong, and today's decision is taking us backwards. as you read just some of the pieces of justice ketanji

brown's dissent, what you heard in what she wrote was acknowledgment of the structural racism that still exists in this country. and when i talk about structural, what i'm talking about is all of the systems, all of the social systems that compound on our students who have been historically marg marginalized to deny them access and opportunity. we're not just talking about the education system. when we think about the time our students have done everything we've asked them to do and they are ready to go to college, they have already been impacted by the health care system and by the housing system and by food insecurity and all of those things that we know are not color blind, and so affirmative action, as eddie said earlier, was only just a partial remedy. we yet had work to do to address all of those systems that

determined whether our students come to our schools ready to learn every day. we know the impact of creating a diverse learning space, justice thomas could not be more wrong. it is absolutely an education issue. we have evidence after four decades that students, not just students who look like me, not just students of color, but white students too, that they benefit academically as well as socially and emotionally when they have a diverse learning environment. >> can you speak more to that, john? because -- mr. secretary, because thomas was the person who wrote the majority opinion. we understand a couple of the other justices wrote additional opinions that supported the majority's decision here. he questioned during the arguments what compelling interest universities or colleges have to have a diverse student body.

>> he's exactly wrong. it's very clear that students need to be prepare for a diverse work force. when you talk to employers and many employers filed briefs in this case, including the u.s. military. they talked about the benefit of students having exposure to folks who are different from them. the evidence is that when folks work in diverse teams, they'll develop better solutions. east wrong about the educational benefit of diversity ask also in denial about the reality of how race operates in this country. it is clear that there are still obstacles based on the race to opportunity in the united states and this is one tool to help ensure that when we build a class, it reflects our diversity, that we can somewhat push back against those obstacles to opportunity. taking away this tool will make it harder. when we look at what happened in california and michigan after

affirmative action was banned in those states, we see there was almost an immediate, devastating impact in terms of the enrollment of students of color, particularly african american students. >> i have our steve kornacki standing by right knew with us. everybody please stay with me, and thank you, i'm really appreciating all of your perspectives on this, an important issue that impacts millions and millions of americans. steve, bring us the numbers because you're a data guy. what are you finding when it comes to affirmative action and the potential impact of this decision? >> yeah, there have been lots of polls taken through the years asking about affirmative action, asking specifically about the use of race and ethnicity as criteria, as part of criteria for college admissions. take you through the numbers that we have on this because they've been pretty consistent. so i think there's a couple of layers to this. when you ask this question, this is from a "washington post" poll several months ago. in general, they asked, programs designed to increase racial

diversity on college campuses. what's your attitude in general towards that concept. basically about two-thirds of all americans think that's a good concept, and that cuts across racial lines here. among whites it's close to 60%, 74, 75. broad support for the concept of programs that will increase racial diversity. but when you get to what was before the supreme court here, specifically using race, specifically using ethnicity as part of that college admissions decision-making process, this flips afternoon and you find broad opposition. in fact, this "washington post" poll, this was conducted as the arguments for this case that we're now getting the ruling for as the arguments were taking place. they asked about what's just happened. they said if the supreme court bans colleges and universities from considering race ask ethnicity in admissions, would you favor or oppose.

it's almost two to one favor over oppose. this is a pretty consistent result. ask i think strikingly when you break this down biracial and ethnicity group, you see strong support among white americans for this ruling. among african americans it's close to a split, 47% favor, 53% said they would oppose the supreme court doing that. majority support among hispanic americans, majority support among asian americans. more recently there was a poll taken specifically -- i thought it was in here, i can tell you more recently there was a poll taken of asian americans on this question, and again, a majority of asian americans in that poll said that they oppose the use of race and ethnicity in college admissions. one other reference point when you talk about public opinion on this is what happened in california, the biggest and most diverse state in this country just a couple years ago in 2020. this was on the ballot. california back in 1996 had

banned the use of race and ethnicity in public education, public hiring and public contracting. in 2020, supporters of affirmative action put an initiative on the ballot that would have taken that away. it would have reinstalled affirmative action. this is california heavily democratic, extremely diverse state on the same day that joe biden carry california by 30 points, a referendum to reinstate affirmative action lost by 14 points. again, when you get into whether it's at this referendum in california at, when you specifically ask about the use of race and ethnicity in the decision-making process, that tends to be very unpopular. and that tends to be broadly unpopular when you go across racial groups. >> you know, that may be true, steve, but i quoted a poll earlier that showed when asked should the supreme court bar colleges from considering race, there was the majority of

americans in that particular poll just this past may, an ap poll that said they didn't think it should be barred. maybe it depends how the question is specifically asked. i think it is important for us to show, though, that this is obviously an issue that people feel strongly about, right? and we're getting more and more reaction pouring in, so forgive me if we don't have the graphic ready, but i'll bring eugene back into the conversation. you have a statement from some of the campaigns, and the leading republican candidates, his campaign is putting out, president donald trump made today's historic decision to end the racist college admissions process possible because he delivered on his promise to appoint constitutionalist justices. your reaction to that? >> well, are we surprised? are we surprised that former president trump would try to take -- take advantage of this? he's leaning into his supreme

court appointments now in this phase of his campaign. now on affirmative action, recently he's been leaning into the dobbs decision on abortion and i think he's, you know, trying to submit that republican base that would perhaps have felt strongly that affirmative action should end. i do want to point one thing out, the court does say, in the chief justice's majority opinion, there is nothing that prevents a university from taking an essay into account, and how race affected a particular student. right at the end, however, the court comes back and says, basically, no, you can't do that. that universities may not establish through application essays or other means the regime we hold unlawful today.

what cannot be done directly cannot be done indirectly. and so, to me, that does mean there is probably going to be more litigation, universities are probably going to use those essays when they mention race as a factor. but it sounds as if this court is going to be hostile to the outcome if they do. so, i think they are intending to drive a stake through affirmative action in college admissions. and then sort of gussieing it up with some language that appears to leave an opening, but really doesn't. >> to kristen welker who is standing by at the white house for us. any reaction from the biden administration to this historic ruling yet? >> reporter: no reaction yet. but here's what i can tell you, they are reviewing the decision as we speak. and i anticipate that we will get some type of a statement shortly.

we may even hear from president biden today, he's heading to new york where you are for a pair of fund-raisers. i have been talking to administration officials here, though, and i did get a little bit of prereaction because i think everyone was bracing for an outcome that would potentially be a setback for affirmative action, so let me read you something from a source familiar with the administration's thinking who tells me, quote, president biden supports making an education beyond high school accessible to all americans. as the biden/harris administration reiterated, the federal government has an interest in ensuring that our colleges and universities produce graduates who come from all segments of society, and who are prepared to succeed and lead in increaingly diverse nation. a case back in 2016, as the administration argued during oral arguments, the court should do so again. so, ana, i anticipate that will

be the type of reaction that we will hear from this administration, but, again, this is a complicated decision, so i think that officials here are trying to make sure that any reaction tracks with what is actually in these written pages. as a political matter, though, officials here have stressed this is a president who values diversity, who made that a key priority of his presidency. he even passed an executive order last year that ensures that agencies are diverse. and i wouldn't be surprised if we heard about this out on the campaign trail. you've seen that with the decision to overturn roe v. wade. the president, the vice president, calling the court an extremist court. this is undoubtedly a political issue as much as it is a policy issue. i think you'll see president biden use that and talk about that out on the campaign trail as well. >> we also know, president biden will be joining our nicolle wallace today for a live interview in the 4:00 hour, right here on msnbc, where i'm sure she will ask him a question at the very least on this

historic day as the supreme court has now essentially barred the use of race in the college admissions process. and much more to come on this as we continue our special coverage throughout the day. thank you to everyone who joined us this hour. that's going to do it for us. breaking news coverage continues with alex witt after a short break. coverage continues with ax lewitt after a short break. (bobby) my store and my design business? we're exploding. but my old internet, was not letting me run the show. so, we switched to verizon business internet. they have business grade internet, nationwide. (vo) make the switch. it's your business. it's your verizon. i have moderate to severe crohn's disease. now, there's skyrizi. ♪ things are looking up ♪ ♪ i've got symptom relief ♪ ♪ control of my crohn's means everything to me. ♪ ♪ ♪ control is everything to me. ♪ feel significant symptom relief with skyrizi, including less abdominal pain and fewer bowel movements at 4 weeks. skyrizi is the first and only il-23 inhibitor for crohn's that can deliver both clinical remission and endoscopic improvement.

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a very good morning to all of you. it is 11:00 a.m. eastern, 8:00 a.m. pacific. i'