Affirmative action certainly isn’t the only solution to the problem, the companies said, but a “full court press” is needed to address the lack of diversity in STEM fields, the brief states.
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The case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, involves a white woman who was not admitted to the college.
Sigal Alon has studied class-based affirmative action as an associate professor at Tel Aviv University and author of the book “Race, Class, and Affirmative Action”. And several justices appeared skeptical of the university’s procedures.
Ultimately, Ayres and Brooks concluded, the smaller number of black lawyers and the lower law school grades for black students could not definitively be blamed on affirmative action.
“It’s kind of the assumption that if a black student or a Hispanic student is admitted as part of the top 10 percent plan, it has to be because that student didn’t have to compete against very many whites and Asians”. Abigail Fisher sued UT in 2008 saying she was denied admittance to the school because she was white. Fisher’s attorneys claim the program at the University of Texas violates the Fourteenth Amendment, which guarantees equal protection under the law. The case is back at the Supreme Court because the original plaintiff and her lawyers maintain that lower courts did not adequately follow the Supreme Court’s directions in considering the case after the 2013 ruling. Writing for the court, Kennedy said universities must show that “available, workable race-neutral alternatives do not suffice”.
The court’s ruling on the Fisher case is expected in June 2016.
There seemed little doubt the choice would come down to Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. Wednesday’s oral argument centered on how the university uses race as a factor, with some conservative justices challenging the admissions program created to boost minority enrollment. In Texas, students in the top 10 percent of their graduating high school class are automatically admitted to public universities in the state, including UT.
“You’re talking about the time – (we said in a 2003 decision) that we did not expect these sort of programs to be around in 25 years, and that was 12 years ago”. “Really, it is on the basis of bad stereotyping”.
But chief justice John Roberts made clear he was impatient with the continued need for affirmative action in admissions policies.
The most vocal supporter of the Texas program was Associate Justice Sonia Sotomayor who listed some of the reasons university officials gave in favor of increased diversity; including concerns about race-related incidents on campus and minority students complaining about feeling isolated.
“They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they’re – that they’re being pushed ahead in – in classes that are too – too fast for them”, Scalia had the gall to generalize.
During Wednesday’s oral argument in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas Austin, Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia asked whether most African-American students might be more suited to “less-advanced”, “slower-track” colleges – and in doing so, called into question where the court’s conservative majority stood on racial integration as a broader goal.
Still others say if colleges could no longer consider race at all, looking at income alone wouldn’t cut it.
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This decision could be a death knell to affirmative action when we are nowhere near racial diversity in higher education. She now works in Austin. When the justices asked if this was all the party is looking for, Rein said it was not.
