Fisher first appeared before SCOTUS three years ago, when the justices sent her case back to District Court for the Western District of Texas to examine if the university needed to consider race to create a diverse class of undergraduates.
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The Nevada senator said the idea that black students should be pushed out of top universities into lesser schools is “unacceptable”. This is the second time her case is in the Supreme Court.
This viewpoint by one of the nation’s top judicial voices comes as colleges across America are dealing with high levels of racial incidents and confrontations on campus.
Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid also had a vibrant reaction to Scalia’s words.
Scalia also said he questioned the premise that the university “should admit as many blacks as possible…”
Scalia’s argument, which provoked a firestorm on Wednesday, was rooted in “mismatch theory”, which suggests an ill-fit between the country’s elite universities and minority students who are unprepared for the academic rigor that the schools demand.
Kennedy has never upheld a race-conscious plan like the one being challenged in this case from the University of Texas (UT) at Austin.
This is not a person talking about a subset of blacks with a particular kind of educational background; taking his words at face value, this is a person asserting that African-Americans as a whole belong in “lesser schools” that are not “too fast for them”. Trump has made several controversial comments but most recently, the candidate suggested blocking all Muslims from immigrating to the U.S. “It’s 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”.
Scalia has a long history of making remarks in blunt terms without seeming to care about offending those in his sights, reflecting the sensibilities of a staunch conservative born in the 1930s who came of age as the civil rights movement was beginning.
Although Scalia’s questions attracted the most attention, other justices’ comments may have focused more on issues that could be crucial to the outcome. The case centers on Abigail Fisher, a white student who, because she was not in the top 10% of her high school graduating class, was not eligible for automatic.
Fisher sued the University of Texas in 2008, claiming she would have been admitted if she was not white.
“The good news, from my standpoint, is that public officials did not give up on diversity”, Kahlenberg said. “Maybe it ought to have fewer”. So should I on the Supreme Court (say) this is a deserving minority? Still, at least five Justices will need to vote to change a lower court’s decision to allow the university’s current affirmative action stand.
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“I don’t think the solution to the problems with student body diversity can be to set up a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools”, said Gregory Garre, lawyer for the University of Texas.
