{"id":5996,"date":"2013-06-24T15:18:44","date_gmt":"2013-06-24T15:18:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5996"},"modified":"2013-06-24T15:18:44","modified_gmt":"2013-06-24T15:18:44","slug":"fisher-ruling-affirmative-action-lives-on-by-a-thread","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/praag.org\/?p=5996","title":{"rendered":"Fisher ruling: ‘Affirmative action lives on by a thread’"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Abigail<\/a>
Abigail Fisher<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited ruling on affirmative action — but didn’t offer a definitive opinion on whether colleges may consider the use of race in admissions.<\/p>\n

Ruling 7-1,<\/a> the court found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit erred in not applying “strict scrutiny” to the policies of the University of Texas at Austin. The case is Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin,<\/a><\/em> in which Abigail Fisher, a white woman rejected for admission by the university, said that her rights were violated by UT-Austin’s consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions. Fisher’s lawyers argued that the University of Texas need not consider race because it has found another way to assure diversity in the student body.<\/p>\n

The decision said that “good faith” by the university would not be enough to justify the consideration of race. But the decision — by Justice Anthony Kennedy — does not offer an opinion on whether the University of Texas can produce sufficient evidence. Rather, it faults the appeals court for not reviewing that question using the high bar of “strict scrutiny” for the consideration of race.<\/p>\n

The Supreme Court did not — as some thought it might — reverse past decisions that allowed colleges to consider race. In fact, the conclusion of the decision states that colleges must meet the requirements previously given by the court to justify the use of race. Quoting from the landmark 1978\u00a0 Bakke<\/em> decision, today’s ruling says: “In order for judicial review to be meaningful, a university must make a showing that its plan is narrowly tailored to achieve the only interest that this Court has approved in this context: the benefits of a student body diversity that ‘encompasses a . . . broa[d] array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element.'”<\/p>\n

It is likely that today’s ruling could mean that — after another round at the Fifth Circuit — the case could return to the Supreme Court.<\/p>\n

Moments after the decision was handed down, Michael Olivas, an expert on higher education law (and a defender of affirmative action) e-mailed: “Affirmative action lives on by a thread, and demography will start to assert itself.” Olivas is director of the Institute for Higher Education Law and Governance at the University of Houston and author of Suing Alma Mater: Higher Education and the Courts<\/a><\/em> (Johns Hopkins University Press).<\/p>\n

\n

The Record So Far<\/strong><\/p>\n

This website,<\/a> maintained by the University of Texas at Austin, includes briefs and prior rulings in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin,<\/a><\/em> in which Abigail Fisher, a white woman rejected for admission by the university, said that her rights were violated by UT-Austin’s consideration of race and ethnicity in admissions decisions.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Fisher’s argument was that past Supreme Court decisions have allowed colleges and universities to consider race and ethnicity only if diversity could not be achieved in race-neutral ways, so the University of Texas had no legal need to consider race. The university in turn said that the percent plan provided it with only a limited level of diversity and that it had the right to take additional measures to assure a greater level of diversity.\u00a0 Most major college associations backed the University of Texas, as did many civil rights organizations. Asian-American groups split<\/a> on the case. – Inside Higher Ed. Read the full article here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

WASHINGTON — The U.S. Supreme Court today issued its long-awaited ruling on affirmative action — but didn’t offer a definitive opinion on whether colleges may consider the use of race in admissions. Ruling 7-1, the court found that the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit erred in not applying “strict scrutiny” to the … Continue reading “Fisher ruling: ‘Affirmative action lives on by a thread’”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":2714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[782,1295],"tags":[1282,3428,3427,499,65,12251],"class_list":["post-5996","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-features","category-in-depth-coverage","tag-abigail-fisher","tag-admissions","tag-affirmative-acton","tag-fisher-v-university-of-texas","tag-race","tag-united-states"],"cc_featured_image_caption":{"caption_text":false,"source_text":false,"source_url":false},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/praag.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/10\/abigail_fisher_supreme-court.jpg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996","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=5996"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6000,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5996\/revisions\/6000"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/2714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5996"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5996"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/praag.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5996"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}