Now that President Biden has turned America against the Asian-American students whose cause President Trump had championed in the Harvard affirmative action case, the next question in the civil rights dispute will be whether the justices take the case. It will be illuminating to see how Mr. Biden will square his promise to protect Asian Americans from bias and discrimination with opposition from the Justice Department.

Amid the recent spurts of violence against Asians, after all, Mr. Biden pledged to “combat racism, xenophobia, and intolerance against Asian Americans.” Is such discrimination somehow more tolerable when it’s being done by Ivy League admissions officers? Students for Fair Admissions’ lawsuit reckons the civil rights of Asian-American students have been violated by Harvard’s race-conscious admissions process.

Students for Fair Admissions found evidence of “astonishing racial disparities” in acceptance rates. Under Mr. Trump, America supported the lawsuit in court filings. Yet, in a filing Wednesday, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar urged the Supreme Court to turn down Fair Admission’s case. That would be a win for Harvard, which has prevailed in district court and with the riders of the First Circuit.

General Prelogar says the Supreme Court should uphold its earlier ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger, which allowed the University of Michigan’s law school to use race as a factor in admitting students. In Grutter, General Prelogar says, Michigan’s admissions program passed constitutional muster because it was carefully designed to help achieve “the educational benefits that flow from a diverse student body.”

In short, General Prelogar says, the Grutter model of affirmative action should be upheld because it doesn’t violate anyone’s civil rights. Instead it merely weighs an applicant’s race “in a flexible, nonmechanical way” — as a “plus” in the admissions process. As Fair Admissions sees it, though, at Harvard, “race is not a ‘plus’ that is always ‘beneficial’; it’s a minus for Asian Americans.”

SFFA points to the admission rates for top-tier applicants to Harvard. In this tier, which includes students with the highest grades and test scores, African Americans have a 56.1 percent acceptance rate. Meanwhile 31.3 percent of top-tier Hispanics are accepted — yet the number is only 12.7 percent for Asian Americans, Fair Admissions’ lawyers report. General Prelogar reckons that’s a scheme to “relitigate for a third time.”

More boldly, SFFA asks the high court to reconsider its own precedents on affirmative action. Fair Admissions “cannot justify that extraordinary step,” General Prelogar says — and even if it could, “this case would be a poor vehicle for reconsidering Grutter.” She takes at their word “the testimony of Harvard’s admissions officials consistently disavowing any intent to discriminate.”

Mr. Trump’s Justice Department, by contrast, backed the Asian-American students, telling the riders of the First Circuit in a court filing that “Harvard’s admissions officers tended to evaluate Asian Americans, as compared to members of other racial groups, as having less integrity, being less confident,” and “constituting less-qualified leaders.” Justice announced: “Race discrimination hurts people and is never benign.”

In any event, the gulf between Mr. Biden’s words and his administration’s actions is startling. “We have to speak out. We have to act,” Mr. Biden insisted, “to prevent discrimination, bullying, harassment, and hate crimes against” Asian Americans. This lawsuit offered him a well-nigh perfect opportunity to hold everyone, even as distinguished an institution as Harvard, to the same standard in respect of fairness.