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Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson, President Biden’s nominee to the U.S. Supreme Court, said she wouldn’t hear the Harvard University affirmative action case in the fall if she is confirmed.
Speaking at her Senate confirmation hearing, Judge Jackson placed her decision in the context of past decisions. In 2018, she recused herself from a suit by a Harvard librarian against the Environmental Protection Agency because “I was a member of the board of the university that employed the plaintiff.”
Jackson currently serves on Harvard’s Board of Overseers, but her term on the board expires this year. She told the Senate that in that suit, “I determined that my impartiality might reasonably be questioned and that this issue was incurable.”
Her recusal is a blow to Harvard (and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, which has a case that the Supreme Court justices have joined with Harvard’s). That would leave only two justices on the court (Justice Elena Kagan and Justice Sonia Sotomayor) as presumed votes in favor of affirmative action.
