The U.S. Supreme Court has issued a decision to restrict public and private higher-education institutions from considering an applicant’s race or ethnicity in admission decisions. The court’s action effectively overturns nearly five decades of precedent allowing for limited use of affirmative action in college admissions. The Supreme Court’s six conservative justices carried the majority in two separate cases involving race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina.

The decision “undermines decades of progress centered on the educational value of diversity and will reverse gains made in the battle against health inequities,” said AMA President Jesse M. Ehrenfeld, MD, MPH, who is a senior associate dean, tenured professor of anesthesiology and director of the Advancing a Healthier Wisconsin Endowment at the Medical College of Wisconsin.

The AMA and more than 40 other organizations joined an Association of American Medical Colleges-led amicus brief that urged the high court to “take no action that would disrupt the admissions processes the nation’s health-professional schools have carefully crafted in reliance on this court’s longstanding precedents.”

Dr. Ehrenfeld said the ruling “restricts medical schools from considering race and ethnicity among the multiple factors in admissions policies and will translate into a less diverse physician workforce.”

My latest for the AMA. The whole shebang.