There are less Black and Latino freshman at many of the nation’s elite institutions, including at Haverford and Swarthmore Colleges, following a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year banning race-conscious considerations for college admissions.

Haverford College’s domestic students of color declined by 1.6 percentage points, writes Susan Snyder for The Philadelphia Inquirer.

At Haverford, 7.2 percent of U.S.-based first-year class students identified as Black, compared to 8.3 percent last fall.  Hispanic students declined from 11.5 percent to 10.2 percent, and there was a .8 percentage point drop in Asian students.

Swarthmore College spokesperson Alisa Giardinelli said preliminary numbers show 52 percent of Swarthmore’s first-year class are domestic students of color, compared to 56 percent last year.

Some college officials blamed the court decision for the decline.

Without race or ethnicity information from applicants, many “well-qualified, well-matched applicants from historically underrepresented backgrounds” were left out who would have been admitted in the past and would have excelled, said Stu Schmill, dean of admissions at MIT.

After the court decision, colleges sought ways to broaden their applicant pools, targeting certain ZIP codes for greater diversity and to access students from lower socioeconomic groups.

Read more about the reduction in Black and Latino freshman on college campuses in The Philadelphia Inquirer.