The Supreme Court has waded back into the affirmative action thicket, taking up the issue of the proper role, if any, of race in college admissions, in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, which it will be hearing this fall, likely in October.
Abigail Fisher, who is white, was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin even though her academic credentials exceeded those of many admitted minority applicants. She challenged UT-Austin’s consideration of race in selecting its incoming freshmen but lost before the district court in light of the Supreme Court’s 2003 ruling in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In Grutter, a divided Court held that using race as a factor (but not one tied to a set number of points or quotas) was justified in the name of diversity. But UT-Austin’s admissions program treats race in a different way, and gets different results, than did the admissions program Grutter upheld at the University of Michigan Law School.
The Fifth Circuit panel nevertheless affirmed the district court, but Judge Emilio Garza specially concurred to say that while he was bound by Grutter, that decision seemed to conflict with other precedent and with the Fourteenth Amendment’s Equal Protection Clause. The Fifth Circuit then voted 9-7 against rehearing the case en banc (before all judges on the court), over a sharp dissent from Chief Judge Edith Jones that emphasized how the ruling would allow states to play fast-and-loose with Grutter’s narrow-tailoring requirement.
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