Michelle Obama, Whoopi Goldberg, & More Call Out SCOTUS Overturning Affirmative Action

Many stars were angered by the Supreme Court opinion ruling it unconstitutional for colleges and universities to consider race when deciding admissions.

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June 29, 2023 12:08PM EDT
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Michelle Obama visits the Royal Arena in connection with her book tour for her biography 'Becoming' in Copenhagen, Denmark, 09 April 2019. In her book, she tells about life as America's first African American first lady. Michelle Obama visits Copenhagen, Denmark - 09 Apr 2019
EXCLUSIVE: Former First Lady Michelle Obama steps out with friends Bruce Springsteen and wife Patti Scialfa at celebrity restaurant Polo Bar in New York City. The two families have been friends since The Boss campaigned for Barack Obama during his successful run for the White House in 2008. Michelle famously told her President husband he needed to spend more time with Springsteen. Both men have talked about their friendship — fortified in part by the bond between their wives, Michelle and Patti. In the first episode of a podcast, called Renegades, Obama, 59, said he and Springsteen, 71, "grew to trust each other" based on conversations in which they reflected on feeling "invisible" throughout their childhoods. Springsteen sang with a gospel choir at the newly elected president's inauguration in 2009 and later recalled how he thought Obama had the wrong number the first time the Chicago Democrat called him. "And I said, 'OK, let me figure this out. I am a guitar-playing high school graduate from Freehold, New Jersey. And — OK — you want me to do what?" Springsteen said. Over the years, both have realized they had more in common than they initially realized. Namely, that they both felt like outsiders. "I always kept one foot in sort of the blue collar world and one foot in the counter culture world," Springsteen said of growing up in New Jersey. "And I never truly belonged completely in either of them, you know?". 28 Sep 2022 Pictured: Michelle Obama. Photo credit: ZapatA/MEGA TheMegaAgency.com +1 888 505 6342 (Mega Agency TagID: MEGA902427_026.jpg) [Photo via Mega Agency]
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Former First Lady Michelle Obama and many other stars were angered following the Supreme Court’s decision to rule affirmative action unconstitutional on Thursday, June 29. Chief Justice John Roberts penned the court’s opinion, which overturned the precedent that allowed colleges and universities to consider race when deciding admissions. “Both [Harvard and UNC’s admissions] programs lack sufficiently focused and measurable objectives warranting the use of race, unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points. We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” he wrote, per CNN. 

Both Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Ketanji Brown Jackson penned dissenting opinions. Jackson expressed how she felt that the court’s decision didn’t do the proper work to solve the issue. “The best that can be said of the majority’s perspective is that it proceeds (ostrich-like) from the hope that preventing consideration of race will end racism,” she wrote, per The Hill. “If the colleges of this country are required to ignore a thing that matters, it will not just go away. It will take longer for racism to leave us.”

Tons of stars took to social media to show their disapproval of the Supreme Court’s decision. See reactions from Obama, Whoopi Goldberg, and more here.

Michelle Obama

Former First Lady Michelle Obama released a lengthy statement, sharing her experience as a college student, and her fears about wondering whether she “belonged” in her school. “Back in college, I was one of the few Black students on my campus, and I was proud of getting into such a respected school. I knew I’d worked hard for it. But still, I sometimes wondered if people thought that I got there because of affirmative action,” she wrote. “But the fact is: I belonged.”

Obama continued and said that there are “countless” students who felt like her, and she pointed out how there are tons of students who receive special consideration besides just race. “So often, we just accept that money, power, and privilege are perfectly justifiable forms of affirmative action, while kids growing up like I did are expected to compete when the ground is anything but level,” she wrote.

She concluded by saying that there was still so much work to be done to help young people who may be worried about their future and possible higher education after the SCOTUS decision. “Today is a reminder that we’ve got to do the work not just to enact policies that reflect our values of equity and fairness, but to truly make those values real in all of our schools and workplaces, and neighborhoods,” she said, before listing a number of charities to help.

Whoopi Goldberg

Shortly after the news broke, Whoopi Goldberg called out the court at the start of The View. “The 14th Amendment is supposed to promise equal protection, but if everyone was actually treated equally, we wouldn’t have had to put in affirmative action. Wouldn’t have had to do it!” she said. “People wouldn’t have had to march and beg and got hosed and all of these things that people did to just balance us out with everything else going on in the country.”

Sunny Hostin

The View co-hosts also asked if there would be more efforts to oppose legacy admissions to colleges and universities. Sunny Hostin and Alyssa Farah-Griffin also noted how the opinion didn’t stop colleges from considering how race affected different applicants’ lives. Sunny showed agreement with the dissenting opinions that ignoring race will not make the problem go away.”Pretending that it is no longer an issue exacerbates the problem,” she said on The View. 

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez

New York Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez also released a statement, calling out the Supreme Court for not doing away with legacy admissions. If SCOTUS was serious about their ludicrous ‘colorblindness’ claims, they would have abolished legacy admissions, aka affirmative action for the privileged,”  she tweeted. “70% of Harvard’s legacy applicants are white. SCOTUS didn’t touch that – which would have impacted them and their patrons.”

Barack Obama

Former President Barack Obama shared a statement, quote-tweeting his wife and echoing her calls to support UNCF, Hispanic Scholarship Fund, APIA Scholars, American Indian College Fund, TheDream.US, Thurgood Marshall College Fund, DC Cap, and Hope Chicago.

“Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive towards a more just society. But for generations of students who had been systematically excluded from most of America’s key institutions–it gave us the chance to show we more than deserved a seat at the table,” he wrote. “In the wake of the Supreme Court’s recent decision, it’s time to redouble our efforts.”

Joe Biden

President Joe Biden also expressed his disapproval for the decision, saying that it went against the precedent that had been set. He also spoke about how racial diversity helps make colleges better. “For decades, the Supreme Court recognized a college’s freedom to decide how to build a diverse student body and provide opportunity. Today, the Court walked away from precedent, effectively ending affirmative action in higher education,” he said. “Today’s Supreme Court decision is not the last word.