Bench trials were held in both the Harvard and UNC cases. And both district court judges made extensive findings concerning how the universities used race in admissions. Did those findings matter to the Supreme Court? Probably not. In Students for Fair Admissions, Justice Sotomayor claims that the majority disregarded the findings of the trial court judges, and substituted its own facts.
The Court ignores these careful findings and concludes that Harvard engages in racial balancing because its "focus on numbers is obvious." Ante, at 31. Because SFFA failed to offer an expert and to prove its claim below, the majority is forced to reconstruct the record and conduct its own factual analysis. It thus relies on a single chart from SFFA's brief that truncates relevant data in the record. Compare ibid. (citing Brief for Petitioner in No. 20–1199, p. 23) with 4 App. in No. 20–1199, p. 1770. That chart cannot displace the careful factfinding by the District Court, which the First Circuit upheld on appeal under clear error review.
Justice Jackson made similar claims:
