The Supreme Court on Thursday reaffirmed that the value of creating a diverse student body allows university officials to consider race in making admission decisions, upholding a University of Texas plan that has been the subject of years of legal battles.
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Justice Kennedy’s opinion said that universities must periodically revisit their diversity efforts to make sure they’re not giving race more weight than they should. With Justice Elena Kagan recused due to her work on the case as solicitor general, the vote in the case-called Fisher v. Texas-was 4-3.
Kennedy was joined by liberal justices Ruth Bader Ginsberg, Sonia Sotomayor and Stephen Breyer.
“It remains an enduring challenge to our nation’s education system to reconcile the pursuit of diversity with the constitutional promise of equal treatment and dignity”, Kennedy wrote. Alito Jr. wrote a scathing dissent, saying that the policy in dispute was “affirmative action gone berserk”.
Three other judges – Chief Justice John Roberts, Justice Samuel Alito and Justice Clarence Thomas – disagreed.
MacLennan said Colorado does not have a ban on taking into account race as an admissions factor.
The U.S. Supreme Court’s ruling was widely considered a win for proponents of affirmative action.
In his opinion, Justice Anthony Kennedy states that the Fisher v. Texas case doesn’t set an absolute precedent for future affirmative action cases.
Lower courts ruled in the university’s favor, but in 2013 the Supreme Court sent the case back to the appeals court for stricter review.
A full nine-justice court agreed to hear the immigration case in January, but by the time of the arguments in late April, Scalia had died. However, eight US states do not allow race to be used when considering public college admissions. For them to consider a multitude of factors (including grades, personal achievements, socio-economic concerns and yes, even race) when considering applicants.
“The educational benefits of diversity for all students enhance The University of Texas at Austin, the higher education community, and the nation”, Fenves said in a statement.
Today, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the admissions policies of the University of Texas at Austin. She was denied admission to the University of Texas in 2008.
At the very least, Scalia’s vote could have made the result a tie and limited the high court to issuing a one-sentence opinion upholding the lower court ruling in favor of Texas. It also disadvantages students who have compelling profiles but do not hit the right metrics – the student who suffered a family crisis in her freshman year but recovered and achieved good grades during the rest of her high school career, for example. But in the end, he said the university had met its obligation to defend its program with data.
The decision was immediately held as a landmark decision, with Harvard law professor Laurence Tribe telling the New York Times the decision is the most important on racial diversity in education since the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Education decision that struck down segregation in public schools.
The Court noted that the program that had the largest impact on Fisher’s chance to get into the University of Texas was not affirmative action, but rather the Top Ten Percent Plan.
The decision does not mean the University of Texas can rely on the same policy indefinitely, but Johnson said we could see this again just under different circumstances.
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“We appreciate the (Supreme Court of the United States) decision for recognizing the unique role that higher education institutions play in society and the deference that should be given to them in matters like student body diversity”, Gregory said.
