The U.S. Supreme Court ruled Thursday that affirmative action programs at Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, forcing universities and colleges to adjust admission policies.

In Illinois, widespread rebuke over the decision came quickly from politicians and educators alike, who called the decision a devastating setback to equity at institutions of higher education nationwide.

Eddie Phillips, provost and vice president of academic affairs for National Louis University, one of Chicago’s leading minority-serving universities, said the decision reverses decades of progress.

“I think it sends a clear message that students of color are not seen as important resources and assets to the academic community,” Phillips said Thursday. “This just sends a damaging message that this is not our country’s commitment.”

The Illinois Board of Higher Education sharply criticized the Supreme Court’s decision as well.

“The ruling is an attack on people of color, particularly Black people, who face discrimination through multiple facets of American society,” it said in a statement. “It is disheartening to know that there are people intent on stifling racial equity at a time when we should all be working together to break down barriers because that is the right thing to do.”

Public and private universities in the state, meanwhile, pledged to continue to find ways to promote diversity. Both the University of Chicago and Notre Dame joined many elite private universities in an amicus brief calling on the court to not outlaw affirmative action ahead of Thursday’s ruling.

“We consider diversity to be a strength — and, indeed, foundational to our academic success,” said University of Chicago President Paul Alivisatos and Provost Katherine Baicker in a message to their college community. “We will continue to advance these ideals.”

Northwestern University President Michael Schill made a similar commitment to finding new ways to protect the university’s commitment to diversity.

“Among the most troubling elements is the doubt it casts on the importance of a diverse class in enhancing our educational mission,” Schill said in a statement. “Bringing together people of different backgrounds, viewpoints and experiences enables us to learn from one another.”

But how schools will go about such pursuits — as well as implementing the Supreme Court ruling — will be tricky to navigate, particularly for schools with extremely competitive admissions processes, Phillips said.

“What has been clear is that race cannot be used as a plus-factor in admissions decisions and instead, other characteristics such as one’s socioeconomic status, or academic history could be used, potentially as a proxy for closing equity gaps, as opposed to using race as a proxy for closing equity gaps,” he said. “But in many cases, it’s hard to decouple those things.”

Finding those quantifiable reasons for race-conscious admissions was where the Harvard and UNC lawyers stumbled in their argument before the Supreme Court, said Ronald J. Allen, a law professor at Northwestern who specializes in constitutional law and equal protection rights.

“It’s not a surprise; in fact, if anything, it’s surprising it’s taken this long to get here,” Allen said Thursday of the ruling. “The litigation strategy … has really been quite bad. Relying on diversity was a huge mistake.”

The court’s ruling does allow for schools to consider race when it contributes to “something that’s verifiable, that actually makes a difference,” Allen said. “And that’s what the universities will attempt to do. The result of that will be huge amounts of litigation.”

Phillips said the decision is another major victory for conservative activists, who have been pushing to end the systematic consideration of race in the college admissions process.

“This decision, unfortunately, isn’t surprising and is on par and consistent with some of the previous decisions that we’ve seen,” he said, citing the tumultuous 2022 ruling that overturned Roe v. Wade. “I think what it means for us as a nation is we are continuously moving away from closing equity gaps in addressing some of the systemic barriers that we know impact students of color, particularly those from marginalized backgrounds.”

Local officials were quick to condemn the decision Thursday.

“For centuries, students from historically underrepresented and underserved communities were locked out of higher education — preventing upward mobility and stunting economic development for generations to come,” Gov. J.B. Pritzker said in a statement. “This decision only sets us back.”

[ Supreme Court strikes down affirmative action in college admissions, says race cannot be a factor ]

Pritzker pledged to continue work expanding access to higher education for Illinois students of color, particularly through the state’s Monetary Award Program, which offers grants to full- and part-time students based on financial need.

Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson, a former teacher and Chicago Teachers Union organizer, called the decision “devastating.”

“Affirmative action was a means by which generations of children were allowed access to institutions, access to ideas, and access to cultures that a wicked system of discrimination had long excluded them from,” Johnson said in a statement. “This decision will only further divide communities and strain existing inequities in higher education, but through those inequities will come opportunities for organizing and excellent in the face of struggle.”

Meant to correct historical inequities left in the wake of slavery, Jim Crow laws and discrimination against Latinos and Indigenous Americans, affirmative action policies first centered on employment in the midst of the Civil Rights movement. Harvard launched one of the first affirmative action plans tied to education in the U.S. in the early 1970s, but such policies have repeatedly faced legal challenges, state bans and federal court cases over the ensuing decades.

Applauding the court’s decision, Liberty Justice Center president Jacob Huebert said he believes affirmative action didn’t advance the goal of diversity.

“America was founded on principles of individualism, and the idea that each person should be treated as an individual and not judged favorably or unfavorably based on their race. And that’s the principle at the heart of this case,” Huebert said on Thursday. “If schools all consider people as individuals, that’s going to allow individuals to find the educational opportunities that are best for them, and not every school is going to necessarily reflect the exact racial composition of the general population.”

The legal non-profit recently submitted a brief to the Supreme Court in support of reversing affirmative action, noting that universities often discriminate against Asians and Asian Americans by failing to recognize the diversity among those groups, Huebert said.

“There are people from many different countries and cultures, who, with their different backgrounds would bring different things to the school,” he said. “And when you just make them all a race, it doesn’t account for that at all. The best thing to do is to look at everyone as an individual.”

Illinois State Rep. Kambium Buckner, who unsuccessfully ran for mayor of Chicago earlier this year, said he wasn’t shocked by the conservative court’s opinion.

“We’ve got to make sure that we’re creating pipelines into these universities for young people who have been disenfranchised based on the lack of resources in their communities,” said Buckner, who attended and played football for the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

“No matter what this opinion says, I just want to double down on calling for the University of Illinois system and all of the public school systems in this state to take diversity and inclusion very, very seriously. Not just lip service,” he said. “We shouldn’t have to be governed by affirmative action laws to do this, right? Illinois is one of the most diverse states in the country. And all of our institutions should reflect (this).”

Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul was in a federal appellate court hearing on the state’s sweeping gun ban Thursday when the U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling was released. He had yet to read the decision, but said the high court has been chipping away at affirmative action for decades.

Raoul noted he was one of only a handful of Black students in his law school class and brought a different perspective to the classroom despite coming from a family that was “not without means.”

“I think that perspective is important to every higher education institution in the nation, not just from an African American, but from people of different races that get treated a certain way based on their race,” Raoul said.

Nationally, “It’s time to redouble our efforts,” former President Barack Obama said on Twitter. “Affirmative action was never a complete answer in the drive toward 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.”

Former first lady Michelle Obama, who grew up on Chicago’s South Side and attended Princeton and Harvard universities before she and her husband went on to work at the University of Chicago, shared her own experience as a young Black college student in a separate statement.

“I sometimes wondered if people thought I got there because of affirmative action … But the fact is this: I belonged,” she said. Special consideration for admission extends far beyond race-conscious admission policies, she noted, from affluent student athletes who receive private coaching to those who attend well-resourced schools with programs devoted to test prep and college entrance exams.

“We don’t usually question if those students belong. 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,” Michelle Obama said. “And while I know the strength and grit that lies inside kids who have always had to sweat a little more to climb the same ladders, I hope and I pray that the rest of us are willing to sweat a little, too.”

This is a developing story and will be updated.

Tribune reporters John Bullington, Jeremy Gorner and Dan Petrella, and The Associated Press contributed.

zsyed@chicagotribune.com