Race & affirmative action: how each Justice has voted
Desegregation, affirmative action and race discrimination outside employment. 200 cases since 1946 in the Supreme Court Database (plus OT2025 from our records). The Court hears few cases on this issue each term, so the chart shows each sitting Justice's career-to-date share of votes on the liberal side: each point counts every vote on this issue from their first through that term (shown from their 5th vote).
No Justice shows a statistically detectable change on this issue between the first and second halves of their tenure.
first vs second half of tenure, relative lean, permutation test; shift if Benjamini-Hochberg q < 0.1 across all tests; >= 12 votes in each half, >= 6 terms. "Lean" compares each vote with the Court's majority in the same case (+ more liberal, − more conservative), so it is not driven by which cases the Court chose to hear. Justices with short tenures or few votes on an issue are not tested.
| Justice | Votes | Liberal side | Lean vs Court | Opinions written |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sonia Sotomayor | 7 | 57% | +0.29 | 2 |
| Elena Kagan | 4 | 50% | +0.25 | 0 |
| Neil M. Gorsuch | 2 | 0% | 0.00 | 2 |
| Brett M. Kavanaugh | 2 | 0% | 0.00 | 1 |
| Amy Coney Barrett | 1 | 0% | 0.00 | 0 |
| John G. Roberts Jr. | 11 | 9% | -0.18 | 3 |
| Samuel A. Alito Jr. | 11 | 9% | -0.18 | 5 |
| Clarence Thomas | 24 | 13% | -0.29 | 14 |
| Case | Jr. | Thomas | Jr. | Sotomayor | Kagan | Gorsuch | Kavanaugh | Barrett |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Students For Fair Admissions Inc. v. President & Fellows of Harvard College (OT2022, conservative outcome) | C✎ | C✎ | C | L✎ | L | C✎ | C✎ | C |
L = liberal side, C = conservative side (Supreme Court Database coding); ✎ = wrote an opinion; — = not on the Court.
Source: Supreme Court Database (Spaeth et al.) votes through OT2024; OT2025 from our decision records. Direction coding follows the Supreme Court Database, which classifies, e.g., pro-defendant, pro-civil-liberties and pro-regulation outcomes as liberal; it is a convention, not a judgment.