Gavin Newsom says private California colleges will ‘struggle’ with Supreme Court ruling

California Gov. Gavin Newsom typically has a lightning response to conservative critics or national decisions with consequences for the state.

By the time the Supreme Court gutted federal abortion protections last year, Newsom, a Democrat, had already proclaimed California a “reproductive freedom state.”

In the following weeks, Newsom and California Democrats doubled down, passing a slew of other measures and an amendment eventually approved by voters to cement the right to an abortion in the state constitution. In preparation for another court decision this year on access to medication abortions, he had the state stockpile 2 million units of the pill, misoprostol.

And in the wake of federal court rulings that rolled back gun safety laws, Newsom called for another amendment to the U.S. Constitution that would tighten gun access.

But on Thursday, hours after the Court invalidated decades-old race-conscious college admission policies, Newsom was uncharacteristically stymied.

There is no California response to the end of affirmative action in public education because the state banned the practice a quarter-century ago.

Responding to the Supreme Court ruling is “more difficult because of Prop. 209. California is America’s ‘coming attraction’ on this,” Newsom said at a press conference Thursday, adding that most people probably did not know about the state’s prohibition.

Prop. 209, passed by voters in 1996, barred using race, gender and other factors in hiring, contracting and admissions. The measure covers public institutions, including governmental bodies and the University of California and California State University systems. Efforts to repeal at least parts of the measure, including through a 2020 ballot initiative, have failed.

Once the ban went into effect, the proportion of students from minority backgrounds plummeted at UC schools.

Newsom, who is on the Board of Regents for the University of California, the UCs’ governing body, said the public education system has spent “hundreds of millions of dollars” trying to mitigate the effects of Prop. 209.

“We’ve barely moved the needle,” Newsom said Thursday. He called Prop. 209’s impact “profound and consequential.”

UC regents voted in favor of ending affirmative action in admissions in 1995 before Prop. 209 passed, ultimately ushering the ban into fruition. In 2020, the regents unanimously voted to repeal it. But to amend the state constitution as Prop. 209 did, voters must concur. And they resoundingly rejected the idea in 2020.

California was the first state to ban race-conscious considerations for entry in public institutions, leaving minimal exceptions for schools that accepted federal funds (an exception that longer exists due to the new Supreme Court ruling). Washington state followed in 1998, but eradicated the policy in 2022. Seven other states now similarly restrict considering race in hiring or education.

The Supreme Court decision released Thursday affects California’s private schools, which were exempt from Prop. 209. Colleges and universities can still consider an applicant’s experience based on their race through their essays or interviews, but schools cannot consider race itself as a factor for creating a diverse student body, according to the ruling.

“Now the impacts will be felt in private universities, not just public universities,” Newsom said. The governor added that schools like Stanford University and the University of Southern California will have to struggle like UCs and California State Universities did to try to welcome diverse student bodies.

Still, Newsom said that California’s public higher education has “a lot to share with others” on how to operate without affirmative action in admissions. He remained positive on continued efforts to promote diversity, equity and inclusion.

“We’re a majority-minority state,” he said. “We celebrate our diversity, we don’t tolerate it.”