America isn’t run by Ivy League grads–just ask Joe Biden, the proud graduate of the University of Delaware and Syracuse Law School–so today’s decision is more important symbolically than practically. You can reasonably assume, however, that many of the elite schools will respond by creating a system of admissions preferences using economic class as a proxy for race. If that proves to be true, and the new systems “work” as intended, what happens thereafter?
Do you really think the kind of people who brought today’s case are going to be satisfied with an ostensibly color-blind process that ends up with the same results? They are going to file more litigation and argue that it is the final product, not the intent, behind the system that has legal significance. In other words, they are going to make the same argument about results and motives that the right has consistently rejected in civil rights cases in other contexts.