Supreme Court hears challenge to UT race admissions policy

So that’s the context in which Scalia was saying schools like the University of Texas might be too hard for black students-a lawsuit about a white student who did not make the cutoff for admission to the school.

The Supreme Court arguments in the Fisher affirmative action case were contentious on Wednesday, and as anticipated, Justice Anthony Kennedy will likely be the deciding vote in a potential landmark decision.

Still torn over race, the Supreme Court on Wednesday weighed whether it’s time to end the use of race in college admissions nationwide – or at least at the University of Texas.

Justice, Antonin Scalia was subject to controversy due to his statement that African American students are better off in “slower track” universities. “I don’t think it stands to reason that it’s a good thing for the University of Texas to admit as many blacks as possible”, Justice Scalia said.

The theory does not necessarily say that white students are better than black students because they are unable to keep up with the school’s academic requirements, as Justice Scalia seems to imply. “Maybe it ought to have fewer”, Scalia continued.

Carrie Severino, chief counsel and policy director of the Judicial Crisis Network, says Scalia didn’t imply that African-American students are less intelligent than whites.

Conservative Justice Samuel Alito said it was “terrible stereotyping” to suggest that the minorities admitted under the university’s “top 10” program were inferior to those admitted under the supplemental program being challenged.

When the justices first heard Fisher’s case in 2012, the give-and-take during oral arguments was contentious and the justices appeared ready to strike down the admissions policy. Fisher – a re-examination of the previously disputed constitutionality of University of Texas at Austin’s admissions plan – served as an ominous sign affirmative action’s future to many. It does have an effect, a demonstrated effect on race because a number of minorities, the type they care about, are admitted under the top 10 program.

While Scalia’s words angered many who read about them, he was actually making an “overmatching” argument that has been used by many critics of affirmative action (and rejected by many supporters of affirmative action).

The next year, Fisher appealed the decision.

University officials contend the top 10 percent method alone does not generate a sufficient mix of students to provide campus diversity. He noted that when the court approved using race in small conditions, it said “that we didn’t anticipate these kind of applications to be around in 25 years, and that was 12 years past”. “And the record in this case overwhelmingly shows that without the addition of race, student body diversity suffered, particularly among African-Americans”. Kennedy, however, raised the prospect of returning the case to a federal trial court so the university can try to prove it met a test the court laid out in 2013.

Comments made by the Justice Antonin Scalia went viral, although some people think they were taken out of context.

The arguments focused on whether the university has compelling reasons to consider race among other factors when it evaluates applicants for about one-quarter of its freshman class.

By the end of the unusually long and tense argument, Justice Kennedy indicated that the Supreme Court might have all the evidence needed to decide the case.