William McGurn:

Any day now, the Supreme Court will issue landmark rulings on the constitutionality and statutory compliance of using racial preferences in college admissions. And already the empire is fighting back.

No place is more in­sti­tu­tion­ally in­vested in us­ing race to de­ter­mine out­comes than our col­lege cam­puses. The bet­ting is that the high court will come down against what the chief jus­tice once called the “sor­did busi­ness” of “divvy­ing us up by race.” But the uni­ver­si­ties are even now plan­ning work-arounds that will al­low them to con­tinue to do what they’ve been do­ing—al­beit in a sneakier way.

The two cases in­volve a pri­vate school, Har­vard, and a pub­lic one, the Uni­ver­sity of North Car­olina. Stu­dents for Fair Ad­mis­sions sued both, claim­ing Har­vard dis­crim­i­nated against Asian-Amer­i­can ap­pli­cants and UNC dis­crim­i­nated against both Asians and whites. When the court took the case, Lau­rence Tribe told the Har­vard Crim­son that even if the uni­ver­sity lost, not much would change.