Senior Counsel Chris Wilkinson was quoted in "High Court 'Counting the Years' Until Affirmative Action's End," an article in Law360,* regarding the U.S. Supreme Court’s upcoming decision that could determine the future of race-based affirmative action in college admissions.

The statement from Justice O'Connor appeared to resonate with what Chris called the "swing votes" of Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Brett Kavanaugh and Amy Coney Barrett.

"You could almost hear the justices counting the years from the bench," Chris said. "If you follow the reasoning from the Grutter opinion, you could see them saying that, beginning with the class of 2028, the constitutional protection for affirmative action has sunset because of that 25-year time frame."

Wilkinson said he understood the attorneys' reluctance to specify a time at which the schools could achieve diversity without using race in the admissions process, since the court could hold that against them in the future.

 "No lawyer arguing the case for the universities would have helped themselves by saying, 'We need to do this in five or 10 or 20 years," Chris said.

Read the full article on Law360*.

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