Welcome to Meet the Press Now. I'm Chuck Todd reporting in Washington as the Supreme Court has once again overturned decades of precedent in a landmark decision that stands to fundamentally shift American society.

Earlier today, the court's six conservative judges effectively put an end to affirmative action at

American colleges and universities, striking down race-based admission policies,

specifically at Harvard and at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill,

ruling them unconstitutional

and in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment, the same amendment

that has been a cornerstone of civil rights law in America.

All six justices in the majority were appointed by Republican presidents, three of them by Donald

Trump.

The three dissenting justices were all appointed by Democrats.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts called affirmative action policies their own

form of racial stereotyping. Writing, many universities have for too long wrongly concluded that the

touchstone of an individual's identity is not challenges bested, skills built, or lessons learned,

but the color of their skin. This nation's constitutional history does not tolerate that choice.

The court's liberal justices issued some scathing dissents, multiple dissents, by the way,

there were also multiple majority opinions, too,

accusing the majority of ignoring court precedent and willfully disregarding racial inequalities in America.

Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote the official dissent.

No one benefits from ignorance.

Although formal race-linked legal barriers are gone, race still matters to the lived

experiences of all Americans in innumerable ways. And today's ruling makes things worse, not better.

The political reaction to these decisions has been in a word intense. From the Capitol to the campaign

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