{"id":589,"date":"2012-06-28T08:01:06","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T08:01:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=589"},"modified":"2012-06-28T08:17:02","modified_gmt":"2012-06-28T08:17:02","slug":"u-s-supreme-court-to-rule-on-affirmative-action-today","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=589","title":{"rendered":"U.S. Supreme Court to rule on Affirmative Action today"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/strong>In addition to a ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Healthcare law ( Obamacare) law today,\u00a0 the United States Supreme Court is also set to hand down a ruling on an Affirmative Action case which may impact parents with teens heading to college in the near future.<\/p>\n

An Anglo-Saxon white female student who was rejected admission into the University of Texas argued that African American and Hispanic students with inferior credentials were admitted over her using via the school\u2019s Affirmative Action plan.<\/p>\n

This case,\u00a0Fisher v. University of\u00a0<\/em>Texas<\/em>, was a follow up to the last Texas Affirmative Action case the 5th<\/sup>\u00a0Circuit Court of Appeals decided, known as Hopwood v. Texas<\/em><\/a>.\u00a0<\/em>\u00a0In that 1996 case, the Court ruled the school system\u2019s Affirmative Action program was not narrowly tailored enough to meet a compelling state interest and then overruled a diversity admission policy at the law school.\u00a0 It stated the school could not use race as a factor in admission decisions.<\/p>\n

To get around that decision and do its part to increase Black and Latino admissions, the University of Texas system opted on a plan to admit the top 10 percent of all high schools. That move caused minority student admissions to jump 21 percent.<\/p>\n

However, when the US Supreme Court took up Affirmative Action in 2003 through\u00a0Grutter v. Bollinger<\/a>, the majority stated that diversity is an interest that schools can and should promote as long as they meet the strict standard: that its policy was narrowly tailored to meet the compelling interest in diversity promotion.<\/p>\n

After that case, Texas expanded its Affirmative Action efforts beyond just the top 10% and started taking into account diversity when making admission decisions. It operated under that program until 2008 when Fisher sued after she was denied admission.<\/p>\n

There are up to several dozen factors that each school use to determine who gets admitted and it\u2019s easy for those who get rejected to point to race and use that as a basis for a judicial challenge.\u00a0 And that\u2019s what happened here.<\/p>\n

Fisher claims that the Affirmative Action policy at the University of Texast has become a racial quota system. The dissenting judge in the case below noted that use of a racial animus opens the door to numerical admission based on race alone. But, that was the minority opinion. Fisher managed to push her case up the ladder and was granted a review by the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

What will stand out this round is that the Supreme Court that heard the University of Michigan case, thereby empowering Texas to change its policy back then, is not the current court of 2012 which is dominated by conservatives, 5-4.<\/p>\n

It gets even more complicated because Justice\u00a0Elena Kagan<\/strong>, who was the solicitor general in the case below, has recused herself from the case.<\/p>\n

That maneuver stacks the court with even more conservative Justices, increasing the odds that Affirmative Action may be struck down in its entirety or, at the least, in more extreme ways than before. Justices\u00a0John Roberts<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Antonin Scalia<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Clarence Thomas<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Samuel Alito<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0have taken anti-Affirmative Action stances in prior decisions.\u00a0\u00a0Justices\u00a0<\/strong>Sonia Sotomayor<\/strong><\/a>,\u00a0Ruth Bader Gingsburg<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Stephen Breyer<\/strong><\/a>\u00a0are more liberal and are more likely to uphold the Texas Affirmative Action program.\u00a0 Hence, this decision will hinge on\u00a0Justice Anthony Kennedy<\/strong><\/a>, who under the current make up of the court has become\u00a0the \u201cswing\u201d vote<\/a>, though he\u2019s voted with the conservative wing 63% of the time since 2010.\u00a0 However, he occasionally sides with the liberal wing, according to\u00a0the SCOTUS Blog<\/a>.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s worth noting that Kennedy has\u00a0voted against<\/a>\u00a0\u00a0Affirmative Action in the past. In 1989, he voted in\u00a0City of Richmond v. J.A. Croson Co. <\/em>against federal contractors setting aside 30% of contracts for African Americans.\u00a0 Also that year, he voted with the majority to allow disgruntled White workers in\u00a0Martin<\/em>\u00a0v.\u00a0Wilks<\/em>\u00a0to challenge Affirmative Action settlements. That same year, he also voted in\u00a0Wards Cove Packing<\/em>\u00a0v.\u00a0Atonio<\/em> which challenged numerical underutilization of women or minorities.<\/p>\n

Several groups have filed\u00a0amicus briefs<\/a>\u00a0in this potentially landmark case.<\/p>\n

Affirmative Action programs will not necessarily be automatically ruled unconstitutional, per se.\u00a0 But, the court may look to Texas\u2019 Affirmative Action program, invalidate it, and possibly set up a higher bar for other colleges and universities to climb in order to use race in admission.<\/p>\n

Such a move could, in effect, invalidate all government Affirmative Action programs nationwide.<\/p>\n

Conservative think tanks are watching and hoping this will be the year that Affirmative Action goes by the wayside permanently.\u00a0 And it\u2019s one more perfect hot button issue for the elections, just in time to see if the first Black president gets re-elected.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In addition to a ruling on the constitutionality of the Affordable Healthcare law ( Obamacare) law today,\u00a0 the United States Supreme Court is also set to hand down a ruling on an Affirmative Action case which may impact parents with teens heading to college in the near future. An Anglo-Saxon white female student who was … Continue reading “U.S. Supreme Court to rule on Affirmative Action today”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[356,474,473],"class_list":["post-589","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-united-states","tag-affirmative-action","tag-hopwood-v-texas","tag-us-supreme-court"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=589"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":591,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/589\/revisions\/591"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=589"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=589"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=589"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}