Affirmative action, a mechanism written into the civil rights laws of the 1960s, was designed to ensure equal opportunity for groups that had long been discriminated against by employers and institutions. Those hostile to the advancement of disadvantaged groups have often derided such efforts and called them "quotas," thereby trying to tag affirmative action programs as unfair.

Recent Supreme Court cases have decided in favor of affirmative action by a very close margin, and a new justice could upset the balance.