The conversation around affirmative action at universities has heated up as the Supreme Court of the United States heard arguments once again in the case of a white woman not admitted to the University of Texas at Austin.
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Antonin Scalia should not be hearing the University of Texas case.
He said some minorities would be better off at “less selective colleges where they would have been more evenly matched”. One is called the “percent plan”, which means the university accepts any applicant who is in the top 10% of his/her high school graduating class. But the method in question is a secondary, supplemental admissions policy based on race.
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.
Justice Scalia is making the exhausted argument that admitting African-American students into white schools is akin to putting ponies in a horse race.
G.K. Butterfield (D-N.C.) argued that Scalia’s seat on the U.S. Supreme Court should be in jeopardy.
The justice was alluding to the hotly debated “mismatch” theory, the idea that students given a leg up when applying to competitive universities because of racial consideration are more likely to fail than if they had gone to a less competitive school with similarly prepared students.
“One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don’t come from schools like the University of Texas”, he added.
Garre, formerly a top courtroom lawyer for President George W. Bush, argued that the University of Texas should have leeway to admit qualified black and Latino students who would add diversity to the campus in Austin. “They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that… they’re being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them”.
Earnest said that Obama, who graduated from Columbia University and Harvard Law School, has spent his career in the Senate and White House “opening the doors to a college education for every student in America”. “Maybe it ought to have fewer”. But Wednesday evening, a source familiar with the case clarified that Scalia was summarizing arguments from other cases, as opposed to candidly providing his own commentary on affirmative action.
“He’s also got a very sharp mind and he has less patience with arguments that don’t quite come to grips with the tough issues”, Cassell said. This is the second time her case is in the Supreme Court.
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Scalia was apparently referencing a brief filed by Sander. Let us know in the comments section below.
