After a lengthy court case, a federal judge has ruled against plaintiffs who claimed that Harvard’s race-based admission quotas disproportionately rejected Asian applicants, Reuters reports.

The group that brought the lawsuit, Students for Fair Admissions, pointed to how “Harvard’s policies limited Asian-Americans to 20 percent of incoming classes,” which made them “less likely to be admitted than white, black, and Hispanic applicants.”

The judge who ruled against SFA – U.S. District Judge Allison Burroughs, an Obama appointee – rejected this evidence and instead claimed that Harvard’s is “a very fine admission program that passes constitutional muster,” while admitting that “it could do better.”

Harvard’s President Lawrence Bacow, who came under fire earlier this year for supporting Harvard’s acceptance of an illegal alien who was eventually deported, defended the judge’s ruling, claiming that it “reaffirm[ed] the importance of diversity, and everything it represents to the world.”

Edward Blum, head of Students for Fair Admissions, said that the group will challenge the decision in the federal appeals court, with the hope that the decision will be reversed and eventually taken up by the Supreme Court.