SFFA v Harvard

choi

Students for Fair Admissions, Inc v President and Fellows of Harvard College (June 29, 2023) slip opinion
https://www.supremecourt.gov/opinions/22pdf/20-1199_hgdj.pdf

Note:
(a) Page 1 of the slip opinion from top down:
(i) To request United States Supreme Court for review, a litigant must petition to that court, as a petitioner. The adverse parties are correspondents. When Supreme Court allows the petition, it sends a order (certiorari) to lower court to bring the case up for review.
(ii) Petitioner is Students for Fair Admissions, Inc (SFFA), a membership organization (lifetime due is about $ 5 or 10) founded by Edward Blum in 2014. Its main purpose is to engage lawsuits against colleges. Supreme Court says that only a person who is injured may sue -- something called standing. Often an individual may not be abler to sue -- for example, for lack of fund or his financial loss is trivial in comparison with litigation cost. So Supreme Court also allows organizations to sue on behalf of its members who incur injury -- the most famous of which is National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) to protect blacks' interests. This is representational or organizational standing. This is what paragraph (a) of the syllabus is about.
        In this case, however, NAACP (at minimum its Boston branch) opposed SFFA in the federal court below: district court and Court of Appeals for the First Circuit. NAACP filed no brief in United States Supreme Court.
(iii) Respondents are Harvard University and University of North Carolina. However, often an organization has a different legal name, the name under which it registered under state law. The official name of Harvard University is "President and Fellows of Harvard College" (Harvard College was the first college of Harvard University and is now undergraduate college for liberal arts and science). Similarly, the legal entity is Board of Governors of the University of North Carolina. This is important, because only a legal entity may sue and be sued (which is capacity; for instance, one can not sur police department of a city, but must sue the city, because a police department is not a legal entity; a city is (as corporation).
(iv) A slip opinion is what a court explains why it reaches a certain decision, usually published on the day the court announces its decision, which may or may not be published. For a court of record -- a court that publishes its decisions -- it will takes some time before the publication is accomplished, in paper. In the meantime, the court may still revise its slip opinion. It takes United States Supreme Court approximately five years to have decisions published in bound volumes, and for other courts (federal or states) about two to three months. Once published in paper, the decisions are set in stone, as it were. You may find "slip opinion" at the upper left corner at the page 1 of the above link.
(iv) A reporter (an official who reports court decisions), who is separate from clerk's office, may summarizes the decision. The summary, which United States Supreme Court identifies as "syllabus," (other courts assign a different name) is reporter's own and has no legal force. The syllabus is presented at the first several pages BEFORE the court decision, which starts with "Judge so-and-so delivers opinion of the court." In United States Supreme Court, the font size of syllabus is smaller than that of court decision, but in other courts, the font size is the same.   
        Syllabus of this case is unusually long, reflecting the unusually long court decisions.
(v) "No. 20–1199" is the case number at the United States Supreme Court, where 20 is the term number, indicating the case was docketed in that court in the 2020 term (which lasts from Sept 1, 2020 to Aug 31, 2021, between July 1 and Aug 31 of which the judges are on vacation).

"Argued October 31, 2022."    Usually a case that is argued early in the term is decided in February or March of the next year. So the opinion takes a longer time to write.
(vi) Chief Justice John Roberts delivers opinion of the court, which squarely bases the decision on the seminal Brown v Board of Education of Topeka (a city in Kansas).
(vii) No. 20–1199 docket:
https://www.supremecourt.gov/sea ... public/20-1199.html

(b)
(i) You may skip Syllabus (a), which is to explain why SFFA has representational or organizational standing.
(ii) The merit starts in Syllabus (b). Syllabus (b), at second paragraph from the bottom in slip opinion page 4, quoted Yick Wo v Hopkins  
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yick_Wo_v._Hopkins
, where Yick Wo is Cantonese pronunciation for 益和, name of a laundry store in San Franscisco.
(iii) Syllabus (d), at the last paragraph of slip opinion page 5 quoted "Richmond v JA Croson Co, 488 US 469, 493 (plurality opinion)."

United States Supreme Court has none seats. Opinion of a majority (consisting of at least five justices) constitute opinion of the court, which has legal force. But occasionally, Supreme Court is "splintered" (used in Syllabus (c) ); then opinion of the largest faction is called "plurality opinion," of whose legal force I am uncertain. And Syllabus (d) begins with: "For years following Bakke, lower courts struggled to determine
whether Justice Powell’s decision was 'binding precedent.' "
(iv)
(A) Regents of the University of California v Bakke (1978) 438 US 265 was led by opinion of Justice Lewis F Powell.
(B) Grutter v Bollinger (2003) 539 US 306 was penned by Justice Sandra D O'Connor (1930- ).