“One of -one of the briefs pointed out that -most of the -most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas”, Scalia said. Under Alito’s assumption, diversity at the university level is, she said, “totally dependent upon having racially segregated neighborhoods, racially segregated schools, and it operates as a disincentive for a minority student to step out of that segregated community and attempt to get an integrated education”. The school only added race to the factors considered in the holistic review program in 2004, after the UT determined quantitive program wasn’t able to meet the university’s diversity goals on its own.
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Wednesday’s arguments were heard by eight of the nine justices.
Potentially complicating the outcome, Justice Elena Kagan, who was once the solicitor general, is sitting out the case because she worked on it at an earlier stage at the Justice Department, before joining the court.
“The case, it would appear, now comes down to three options: kill affirmative action nationwide as an experiment that can’t be made to work, kill just the way it is done at the Texas flagship university because it can’t be defended, or give the university one more chance to prove the need for its policy”, said Lyle Denniston on SCOTUSblog.
The Top 10 program is inadequate, he said, because it is a blunt instrument and a product of widespread segregation in Texas high schools.
The argument continued with Rein, prompted by Roberts, arguing that the number of minority admits under the UT affirmative action program is so small – under 3 percent – that it’s not worth the onerous process of considering race.
“Scalia should check out some actual numbers”, Schulman added, posting a National Science Foundation list of the schools graduating the most black science and engineering doctorate recipients, which includes a number of historically black colleges and universities, as well as Harvard and MIT. As of right now, they employ two programs: the “Top Ten Percent” program, where they accept top 10% of class, regardless of race, and the “holistic” program, which takes things like race and other factors into account. Like many selective colleges, UT considers an applicant’s race or ethnicity among many factors in selecting students.
Members of the U.S. Supreme Court clashed over the value of university affirmative action policies, and pivotal Justice Anthony Kennedy raised the prospect that the court might put off issuing a broad ruling.
Roberts: What benefit does racial diversity bring to a physics class?
Kennedy dissented in that case, however. The decision on the case is expected by the end of June 2016.
During oral arguments on Wednesday in Fisher v. University of Texas, crackpot Scalia offered up this thought on Black students.
Systemwide, the University of California has maintained diversity, said Andrew Grossman with the Cato Institute. If black students made up only about 4 percent of the freshmen class, as would have happened exclusively with the top-10 percent rule, they faced “glaring racial isolation” on campus, he said.
Controversial since its inception in the 1960s, affirmative action is once again being debated by the Supreme Court.
Meanwhile, the attorney for Fisher said the policy should be struck down because it was not needed to achieve diversity. She later said what Republicans are trying to accomplish in this case is “not practical”. Justice Sonia Sotomayor fiercely challenged Fisher’s attorneys.
The outcome nearly certainly turns on Kennedy’s vote.
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If the Supreme Court makes a sweeping ruling, ignoring the 2003 Grutter v. Bollinger decision that allowed traditionally unconstitutional classifications by race for a period of 25 years, it will have sweeping effects across all of academia.
