Jewish quotas were at the heart of Supreme Court affirmative action ruling

WASHINGTON (JTA) — Harvard’s 20th-century antisemitic Jewish quotas were a key part of the Supreme Court’s decision to gut affirmative action on Thursday, as the winning litigant and two conservative justices cited them in the landmark case.

The 6-3 decision Thursday, authored by Chief Justice John Roberts, bars universities from using race as an explicit factor in considering admissions, but allows race to be cited by applicants in essays describing their life experiences.

Students for Fair Admissions, the conservative advocacy group that brought the cases against Harvard and the University o...