The U.S. Supreme Court ruled in favor of affirmative action in regards to an admissions program at the University of Texas in Austin on Thursday in a 4-3 vote. The decision rejected a challenge to the admissions program in the Fischer v. University of Texas case, brought in 2013 by Abigail Fischer, a white woman who claims she was denied acceptance to the university because of her race.
The case considered the admissions program of the university, in which top students from high school’s across the state are guaranteed admission. This program is often referred to as the “Top 10 Percent” program. To fill the remaining slots after the top students are chosen, the school considers several other factors, including an applicant’s race. Those remaining slots make up about one fourth of each entering class and it was that step that had been challenged.
Only 7 justices participated in the decision today, as Justice Elena Kagan recused herself for previous work on the case as solicitor general and the late Justice Antonin Scalia’s seat remains empty.
Justice Anthony Kennedy, in writing for the majority, maintained that the school’s race conscious admissions policy did not violate the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. “The University met its burden of showing that the admissions policy it used at the time it rejected petitioner’s application was narrowly tailored,” said Kennedy.
“Therefore, although admissions officers can consider race as a positive feature of a minority student’s application, there is no dispute that race is but a “factor of a factor of a factor” in the holistic-review calculus,” states the Supreme Court’s opinion.
In his passionate dissent, Justice Alito argued that the university had not demonstrated a need for race to be considered in acceptance and that the program favored advantaged students over those from poverty. “This is affirmative action gone berserk,” Justice Alito said, adding the Supreme Court’s decision was misguided and “simply wrong.” Justice Thomas also filed his own dissent, joining with Justice Alito. “The Court’s decision today,” Thomas wrote, “is irreconcilable with strict scrutiny, rests on pernicious assumptions about race, and departs from many of our precedents.”
Many highly selective universities such as Stanford and Yale urged the court to uphold affirmative action. The NAACP joined in the debate, arguing that the elimination of affirmative action “would set in concrete a caste system in which black and Latino UT students likely would be the products of underfunded and underperforming Texas high schools, while white UT students would likely be derived from better funded and better performing high schools.”
The opinion of the Supreme Court can be found here.
