Affirmative action ruling shows ‘willful ignorance of our reality’, critics say

NAACP accuses court of bowing to personally held beliefs of an extremist minority' as race-conscious admissions ends

Civil rights advocates and progressives have expressed outrage and disappointment following a US supreme court decision that severely limits the right to consider race in college admissions.

The court's conservative justices ruled on Thursday that admissions policies at Harvard University discriminated against Asian American applicants and at the University of North Carolina (UNC) against white and Asian American applicants, violating the constitution's equal protection clause.