As the Supreme Court prepares to rule on affirmative action this month, Fortune’s Ellen McGirt outlines the program’s history, whether it’s lived up to its promise, and how its reversal could affect corporate America’s talent pipeline in a riveting deep dive.

While the outcome isn’t certain, the Supreme Court’s conservative majority and penchant for overturning precedent, exemplified by the Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health decision, suggest the Court might abolish affirmative action.

The overturn of race-based college admissions could be the first domino in legal challenges to diversity efforts in the workplace, as CHRO Daily has previously noted. “There are people waiting to take the words of the ruling and bring carry-on cases in a different context,” says Debo P. Adegbile, a former member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights and current chair of law firm WilmerHale’s antidiscrimination practice. “There are already people who are filing cases that are pushing back on the administration, on corporate America, for any effort to lean forward and try and introduce something that looks like a corrective or rebalancing,” he tells Fortune.

The potential ruling against affirmative action wouldn’t end there, with cascading effects on the world of recruitment as campuses—where companies find much of their entry-level talent—become less diverse. A study from 2013 found that workplaces in states that eliminated affirmative action quickly became more homogenous. As a result, companies could find it harder to live up to ESG commitments.

Already, some companies are mobilizing to justify their diversity, equity, and inclusion work with concrete evidence—of which plenty of real-world case studies point to improved financial results, decision-making, and employee sentiment. On the other hand, organizations that only ever paid lip service to the notion of diversity will find the abolishment of affirmative action “a convenient excuse to opt out” of such work in the future, McGirt writes.  

Regardless of the eventual implications, it’s clear that should affirmative action be eliminated, it would permanently alter the D&I landscape.

Read the full article here.

Paolo Confino
paolo.confino@fortune.com
@paolo1000_

Reporter's Notebook

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Wage growth is still on the decline, according to Indeed Hiring Lab. Wages were up 5.3% in May, down from a peak of 9.3% in 2022.

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