Supreme Court holds off on major affirmative action decision

Supreme Court holds off on major affirmative action decision

Avoiding any major ruling on the hotbutton issue of affirmative action

in school admissions, the Supreme Court on Monday sent the case Fisher

v. University of Texas at Austin back to the Fifth Circuit Court of

Appeals. The narrow ruling essentially tees up the issue for the court

to reconsider next year, when it will review another affirmative

action case.



In a seven to one opinion, the court argued the lower court used the

wrong standards to evaluate the Texas college's admissions policies.

Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote for the majority that the Fifth Circuit

should not have given UT Austin as much deference on the matter of

whether its limited approach to racial considerations met the standard

set by the Supreme Court in 2003. That year, in Grutter v. Bollinger,

the court rejected the use of racial quotas but said that schools

could consider race as part of a "holistic" review of a student's

application.



That precedent, Kennedy wrote, "does not permit a court to accept a

school's assertion that its admissions process uses race in a

permissible way without closely examining how the process works in

practice, yet that is what the District Court and Fifth Circuit did

here."



Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, while Justice Elena Kagan

recused herself from the case.



Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin was brought to the court by

Abigail Fisher, a white woman who applied to UT Austin as a high

school senior in 2008. She filed suit against the school after she was

rejected, arguing the university's consideration of race didn't meet

standards previously set by the Supreme Court.



While the University of Texas defended its consideration of race, most

students are accepted into UT Austin through the "Top 10 percent" law

-- a program that doesn't consider race. The "Top 10" program grants

automatic admission to the top students in every Texas high school.

Fisher did not qualify for the program. In 2008, just 216 accepted

students accepted outside of the "Top 10" program were black or

Hispanic.



Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, argued before the court in

October, was considered a major opportunity for the court to rule on

affirmative action. While Monday's ruling doesn't set any new

precedents, the court will take up another affirmative action case as

soon as next year.



The Supreme Court in its next term will consider whether the state of

Michigan violated the Equal Protection Clause by amending its state

Constitution to prohibit affirmative action. The case, referred to as

Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action, reviews a 2006

Michigan ballot initiative that bans the consideration of race or sex

in public education, government contracting and public employment.



The Sixth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Michigan initiative

-- because it came in the form of a constitutional amendment --

"reordered the political process" in a way that put special burdens on

racial minorities.



"Rather than undoing an act of popularly elected officials by simply

repealing the policies they created, Michigan voters repealed the

admissions policies that university officials created and took the

additional step of permanently removing the officials' power to

reinstate them," the appeals court wrote. "Had those favoring

elimination of all race-conscious admissions policies successfully

lobbied the universities' admissions units, just as racial minorities

did to have these policies adopted in the first place, there would be

no equal protection concern."

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