The Colorblind Constitution Prevails

The most important aspect of the ruling, written by Chief Justice John Roberts, is the affirmation that the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees to all citizens the equal protection of the law, means that the same law applies in the same way to every person—without regard to race.

The Court rejected the so-called antisubordination view, which holds that the Fourteenth Amendment forbids only laws that hurt minorities, not those that help them—that is, that different treatment under the same law is permissible in light of historical inequities.

They made clear that the law guarantees equality of opportunity, not outcome. Justice Clarence Thomas, in his concurrence, addressed this point powerfully. Advocates of the 14th Amendment, he wrote, "explicitly clarified that the equality sought by the law was not one in which all men shall be ‘six feet high’; rather, it strove to ensure that freedmen enjoy ‘equal rights before the law’ such that ‘each man shall have the right to pursue in his own way life, liberty, and happiness.’"