The District and Maryland say they are supporting the University of Texas’ race-conscious admissions policy before the U.S. Supreme Court.
The two jurisdictions joined 13 other states and the Virgin Islands in filing a “friend of the court” brief as justices prepare to consider their first affirmative action case in nearly a decade.
“The District of Columbia has long prided itself on being an inclusive and diverse place,” Mayor Vincent Gray said in a statement. “The District government will continue to support programs that will allow this diversity, and the richness and strength it brings, to flourish.”
A spokesman for Maryland Attorney General Douglas Gansler did not have any immediate comment.
In the brief, the states argued that individual states should be allowed to decide how to best evaluate applicants to their public universities.
“The choice among permissible methods to achieve diversity should be left to the discretion of state education officers, who are equipped by experience and expertise to assess how the various methods will work on their particular applicant pools and how the results will promote the educational benefits of diversity,” the brief said.
The states also argued that the Constitution’s equal protection provisions do “not prohibit state colleges and universities from including race as a factor in a holistic, individualized admissions process in order to achieve the significant educational benefits that result from diversity within academic communities.”
The Supreme Court is due to hear arguments in October for the first time since it ruled in 2003 that schools could consider race as a part of a broader approach when reviewing applicants.
The high court ruled in 1978, though, that outright race quotas are unconstitutional. The University of Texas, whose admissions policy is the subject of the case, says it does not use quotas.
Instead, the university told the court that it conducts a “holistic review” when evaluating candidates for admission. Those reviews only take place for students who aren’t admitted under a provision of Texas law that requires the university to admit any high school senior from the state who graduated in the top 10 percent of his or her graduating class.
In a brief filed Monday, the Obama administration supported the university’s position, which a federal appeals court has already upheld. The Supreme Court will release its opinion by June.
