US Supreme Court Upholds College Affirmative Action

The US Supreme Court’s decision to uphold the admission policies at the University of Texas Austin on a 4-3 vote is a welcome declaration for campus diversity. “Public universities such as the University of MI and the University of Texas have a special role and responsibility to uphold these inseparable values”.

When news broke of Fisher’s filing against UT a year ago, the hashtag #StayMadAbby was birthed from Black Twitter after the Supreme Court sent the case to a lower court and late Justice Antonin Scalia made claims that Black students should attend “lesser schools”.

Roger B. Clegg, president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, said the decision was a narrow one.

Hart, who is the director of Byron R. White Center for the Study of American Constitutional Law at Colorado Law, said that the Supreme Court has ruled in the past that taking race into consideration is constitutional as long as it is narrowly tailored to the educational benefits that spring from diversity. Justice Samuel Alito filed a dissent, joined by Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Clarence Thomas.

There were complex circumstances behind both Supreme Court cases.

In 1978, following years of civil strife across the country, the Supreme Court affirmed the limited use of race as a factor in admissions.

The University only resorted to using race “as a factor of a factor of a factor” following an extensive study which concluded that race-neutral policies had not been successful in meeting the goals in the preceding bullet point.

Affirmative action, or “positive discrimination”, can continue to be used by public universities when considering minority students. Speaking to reporters at the White House, Obama said he was pleased the court “upheld the basic notion that diversity is an important value in our society”.

“Today’s decision seems to give universities more leeway to simply use race as a way to get racial diversity and ignore economically disadvantaged students”, he said.

“It is the University’s ongoing obligation to engage in constant deliberation and continued reflection regarding its admissions policies”, Kennedy wrote.

The University of Texas, carefully threading that needle, devised a policy – known as “Top Ten Percent” – guaranteeing admission to high school students graduating in the top tenth of their class. Universities can continue using affirmative action in the admissions process.

“Had Texas lost this case.it could have significantly hamstrung our efforts to spur admission in ways we think best for the university”, said IU spokesman Mark Land.

Affirmative action in college admissions might still be hanging by a thread, but on Thursday the controversial system dodged what was expected to be a death sentence from the Supreme Court.

“What the Supreme Court said was that UT’s policies are working, and that they are good”, he states.

When the court considered the case in 2013, Kennedy wrote the opinion that sent it back to lower courts for a closer examination, and it seemed that the majority was skeptical at the time that the admissions plan would survive.

The professor said the ruling wouldn’t affect “the vast majority” of the nation’s colleges, including the University of Arkansas. While serving as president of the University of Michigan, Bollinger was the named defendant in cases brought against the undergraduate school and the law school at Michigan, Gratz v. Bollinger and Grutter v. Bollinger respectively.