Supporters of affirmative action often claim that taking race or sex into account is compatible with merit-based selection. In the wake of the United State Supreme Court ban on affirmative action in college admissions, and with diversity, equity and inclusiveness schemes banned in several states, the question now arises whether promoting racial or sexual “diversity” as a component of merit remains permissible. Proponents of this type of identity-based diversity insist that they only take identity into account to add to the context of decision-making, and that diversity helps them make merit-based selections rather than being opposed to merit. For example, an article published by the Heterodox Academy argues that:

…far from diversity and inclusion undermining meritocracy, institutions of higher learning only became recognizably ‘meritocratic’ in their hiring and promotion decisions as the pool of applicants grew increasingly diverse.

This notion that diversity is compatible with merit explains the history of Supreme Court decisions sanctioning affirmative action as a justifiable goal. This line of precedent was overturned by the Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), a decision concerning the constitutionality of admissions schemes at Harvard and the University of North Carolina. Their affirmative action schemes were struck down as a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment equal protection clause. Yet that decision seems not to have made much of a difference to admissions processes.