California Gov. Gavin Newsom said observers “only have to look to California” to know how the Supreme Court’s decision to end affirmative action in college admissions will play out.
The Democrat said at a press conference Thursday that he was “frankly unsurprised” by the decision of the conservative-dominated court, and recalled what happened when the University of California system ended affirmative action in admissions in 1995 and California voters passed Proposition 209 to ban the practice in public higher education in 1996.
“The impact that had on Black and brown communities was profound. For those that are wondering what’s going to happen in their states, they only have to look to California to know exactly what’s going to happen,” he said. “You’re going to see a significant decline in African American and Latino admissions in institutions of higher learning.”
A Washington Post analysis found that Hispanic students made up 21.5% of the first-year class at UCLA and the University of California, Berkeley in 2020, 29 percentage points below the population of college-age Hispanic students in California.
The population of Black and Hispanic students at the state’s “selective schools” also dropped in the wake of the ban, though those populations increased at “less selective” public universities, the analysis showed.
Newsom noted that Berkeley admitted about 228 Black students among 7,000 admissions last year.
“I’m very concerned about this. I think you should be, as well,” Newsom said. “I’m frankly unsurprised because we have a Supreme Court that wants to bring us back to a pre-1960s world.”
See Newsom’s remarks in the video below: