KENTUCKY — Thousands of students will return to the classroom and participate in remote learning this month at colleges and universities all across Kentucky.

Earlier this summer, in a 6-3 ruling, justices on the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that affirmative action programs at the University of North Carolina and Harvard was unconstitutional, meaning that colleges and universities should be banned from considering race or ethnicity as part of the admissions process.

The court ruled that both programs violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution and are therefore unlawful. The vote was 6-3 in the UNC case and 6-2 in the Harvard case, in which liberal Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson was recused.

It’s a topic that’s been widely debated in higher education for decades.

Here in Kentucky, State Sen. Steve West, R-Paris, is the chair of the Senate Standing Committee on Education. West is also an attorney and joins this In Focus Kentucky segment to discuss this ruling from the Supreme Court and its impact on higher education in the Commonwealth.

“These are complex cases. The devils in the details, so I’m gonna look into that a little bit more, but just what I’ve heard, it’s a big ruling with big implications, but there are some carve outs I believe in the case. So in reality I don’t think the case will have much impact on our institutions at least for the for the near future. Generally, if you want to improve outcomes, and if you want to improve experience for minorities, I believe it’s pretty basic. You just improve the outcomes for everyone at the university. From personal perspective, we do need to stick with more of a merit based overall view. If we get too far afield from that, too far away from that, then that it really ends up hurting everybody. Because you know, what is your diploma worth? You know, that’s the essence of it when you graduate from university. By the way, you know, in huge amounts of debt, can you rely on that diploma to be worth something? That’s we need to make sure that our students are protected, that they’re not graduating with huge debts. And when they receive that the moment that they walk across the stage, that piece of paper actually means something,” said West.

You can watch the full In Focus Kentucky segment in the player above.