Thursday’s decision affirms that admissions offices can consider an applicant’s race, along with other factors.
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Officials at both Amherst College and the University of MA are praising Thursday’s Supreme Court vote that upheld the affirmative action program at the University of Texas.
The decision was not only important in that it upheld the use of affirmative action in narrowly tailored cases, but also because it marked a potential turning point in Justice Kennedy’s generally prevailing belief in a color-blind constitution.
The court, in a 4-3 ruling written by Justice Anthony Kennedy, decided in favor of the university and turned aside the conservative challenge to a policy meant to foster racial and ethnic diversity on campus.
In his dissent Justice Samuel Alito said “the university had not demonstrated the need for race-based admissions” and that its program benefited advantaged students over impoverished ones. As the University of Texas and its supporters successfully argued to the Court, the college education experience allows students from a variety of backgrounds and experiences to live and work together in a variety of settings. Those states include Arizona, California, Florida, Michigan, Nebraska, New Hampshire, Oklahoma and Washington. The decision, with a vote of 4-3 due to Justice Elena Kagan’s absence, is thought by some to be a more groundbreaking ruling than that of 2003.
But when Scalia died in February, the case was left to only seven justices to decide, and the outcome depended on Kennedy. Among her group of lower-performing applicants, only five black or Hispanic students gained admission, while 42 whites got in ahead of Fisher. On top of that program, UT also considers race and other factors for admission. The appeals court concluded that the program made only limited use of race in its admission process, and it served the University’s interest in creating a racially and culturally diverse student body. We hope that this decision will end the thirty-year campaign by anti-affirmative activists to dismantle efforts by colleges and universities to provide access and opportunity to students of all backgrounds….
A white Texan, Abigail Fisher, filed the suit after she was denied admission to the university. And officials from some of Arkansas’ largest schools said race isn’t a factor when they select students.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the majority in the decision, said that the university should continue to analyze how it judges student applications. For example, Hispanic students make up 19.5 percent of the student body even as Hispanics comprise almost 40 percent of the state’s population.
In 2013, the Supreme Court sent her case back to the lower courts after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals decided the program to be constitutional. In fact, the Texas legislature enacted one: The state automatically offers up to three-quarters of the university’s slots to students in Texas who graduate in the top 10 percent of their high school classes.
“Regardless of that limitation, the University of MI remains steadfastly committed to building and maintaining diversity on our campus”.
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Today’s decision by the Supreme Court in Fisher v. University of Texas is a huge victory for civil rights and equality in our nation.
