Supreme Court Mustn’t Kill Affirmative A

Scalia said that African-American students placed in schools like the University of Texas may feel pushed ahead in classes that are “too fast for them”.

Scalia argued that affirmative action results in academic mismatch, where black students are admitted to more-selective schools and then struggle in the more demanding academic environment.

Hearings began yesterday in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, brought on by one-time UT applicant Abigail Fisher. 2015 Fisher appeals the 2014 ruling to the U.S. Supreme Court, which again decides to hear the case, one of the most important of its current term. “Maybe it ought to have fewer”, Scalia continued.

A University of MI student protests a ban on affirmative action. He added that those students would be better off at the less challenging schools they might have attended without affirmative action.

But Gregory Garre, a lawyer for UT-Austin, said sending minorities to less-advanced schools actually puts them at a disadvantage. Her research suggests that if the Supreme Court struck down the consideration of race in admissions policies, the share of African Americans at elite universities would fall by as much as 50 percent.

“If Scalia’s theory were true, equally prepared students of all races would do worse at more selective colleges”, said Anthony P. Carnevale, the Georgetown Center’s director. The program does not consider race, on paper, but relies on segregated high schools to create diversity in the students it produces in the top 10%. That could mean that the Texas admissions plan is in peril and that affirmative action at colleges and universities around the nation may be in trouble as well..

Scalia, however, questioned whether UT needs to increase its black student population – which now makes up about 4 percent of the student body and has not grown in a decade.

Michael Tyler, DNC Director of African American Media, reminds us, “Remember when Marco Rubio said that we “need more Scalias” on the Supreme Court?”.

“I just think he’s a pull-no-punches kind of guy”, said Paul Cassell, a University of Utah law professor and former Scalia clerk who also served as a federal judge. I think what experience shows… is that now is not the time and this is not the case to roll back student diversity in America. Rather, as the case has worked its way to the Supreme Court, it has tested whether the university’s admissions policy was sufficiently tailored to its interest in fostering campus diversity.