High court scrutinizes race in UT admissions

“There are those who contend that it does not benefit African-Americans to-to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school-a slower-track school where they do well”, Scalia said.

UT attorney Gregory Garre said even though there are critics of the percent plan, it provides opportunities for students that lacked appropriate resources.

Garre offered no argument for why diversity in physics is important, instead pointing to earlier Supreme Court cases which found that student body diversity is, in general, a good thing.

At the University of Texas at Austin, the state’s flagship public university, most freshman are admitted under a program guaranteeing places to the top 10 percent of high school graduating classes in the state. UT, however, now admits either the top 7 or 8 percent so it can comply with the law of 75 percent of an incoming class being Texas residents and the remaining percent open to out of state, worldwide or students being considered through the holistic review.

Scalia continued speaking, apparently addressing Garre’s concern that diversity “plummeted” at schools that had stopped considering race in admissions. “I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer. Maybe it ought to have fewer”.

While the university has asserted that it wants to achieve diversity within racial groups on campus, “the use of race as a factor in admissions can distinguish students only as to one trait – race”, Rein says, adding that the school “has failed to show that race-neutral means could not achieve this supposed interest”. “Hopefully this case will end racial classifications and preferences in admissions at the University of Texas”, she said Wednesday’s arguments were heard by eight of the nine justices. “It has come to this”, he said in his dissent of the high court’s decision to uphold affirmative action in 2003. “There are African-American students for whom the local community college might be better than the University of Texas, Austin, but guess what?” In order to justify considering an applicant’s race, they argue, the university should have a concrete goal, because racial classifications must pass a rigid legal test.

But Justice Sonia Sotomayor defended the use of race for increasing the number of minorities at least slightly from 2004 to 2008, by which time 20% of the university’s black students and 15% of Hispanics were admitted through holistic review rather than class rank. The federal appeals court in New Orleans has twice upheld the Texas admissions program and rejected Fisher’s appeal.

As it stands now, most colleges are generally allowed to use affirmative action polices that consider race and ethnicity when admitting students. The Brookings Institution, a Washington, D.C. think tank, notes the wild card status of Justice Anthony Kennedy whose position on the issue is largely unknown. “We’re just arguing the same case”, he said. Roberts asked, according to a transcript of the hearing.

Although more evidence could be introduced if the case were to be returned to a lower court, Kennedy later questioned whether such a move would be needed and suggested the justices themselves could re-examine the information provided by the university.

Justice Samuel Alito said the university is engaging in “terrible stereotyping” by suggesting there is something “deficient about the African-American students and the Hispanic students who are admitted under the top 10 percent plan”. “Really, it’s based on a awful stereotyping”, said Alito.