The Supreme Court on Thursday ruled that the affirmative action admission policies of Harvard and the University of North Carolina are unconstitutional, violating the equal protection clause of the 14th Amendment.

In the majority opinion, Chief Justice John Roberts wrote that both Harvard’s and UNC’s affirmative action programs “unavoidably employ race in a negative manner, involve racial stereotyping, and lack meaningful end points.”

Over the years, proponents of race-based admissions have argued that the policy ensures that student bodies are diverse, while critics have argued the policy unfairly discriminates against more qualified students based on race.

“We have never permitted admissions programs to work in that way, and we will not do so today,” Roberts wrote in the opinion.

The cases against Harvard and University of North Carolina were separate but related and brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a student activist group.

The group initially sued Harvard College in 2014 for violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which “prohibits discrimination on the basis of race, color, or national origin in any program or activity that receives Federal funds or other Federal financial assistance.”

The complaint against Harvard alleged that the school’s practices penalized Asian American students, and that they failed to employ race-neutral practices. The North Carolina case raised the issue of whether the university could reject the use of non-race-based practices without showing that they would bring down the school’s academic quality or negatively impact the benefits gained from campus diversity.

The First Circuit Court of Appeals had ruled in Harvard’s favor, upholding the outcome of a district court bench trial. The district court said that the evidence against Harvard was inconclusive and “the observed discrimination” affected only a small pool of Asian American students. It ruled that SFFA did not have standing in the case.

In the UNC case, the vote was 6-3 with the three liberals voting in favor of race based admissions. In the Harvard case the vote was 6-2 after Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recused herself due to her previous role on Harvard’s Board of Overseers.

In her dissent, Jackson called the ruling “truly a tragedy for us all.”

Roberts, on the other hand, has long argued that “the best way to stop discrimination is to stop discriminating,” according to George Washington University Law Professor Johnathan Turley.