Ending affirmative action would be disastrous. Just look at California.

Californians have learned some bitter lessons in our battle for affirmative action, and we are sounding the alarm to the US Supreme Court. Our two organizations, California ChangeLawyers and Equal Justice Society, and 23 others filed a “Friend of the Court” brief this month in support of holistic admissions processes that consider race as a factor in admissions. In the pending cases involving Harvard and the University of North Carolina, we urged the Court not to abandon 40 years of constitutional precedent permitting affirmative affirmative because of the disastrous impact it would have on diversity in higher education.

Californians already know. Nearly 30 years ago, Proposition 209 eliminated race-conscious decision making in education, employment, and public contracting, and caused tremendous individual, societal, and economic harm. For example, studies have shown devastating drops in Black and Latinx earning power and increased unemployment rates attributable to Prop 209.

An entire generation of Californians has lost out. In Prop 209’s immediate wake, the average annual enrollment rate for Black students at all four-year public universities in California plunged by 15 percent and by 10.3 percent for Latinx students.