Cara L. Gallagher, Weekend Contributor
When SCOTUS orders a case back to a lower court it’s rare that the case garners the same attention it received when it was in the Supreme Court. But Fisher v. The University of Texas at Austin, a critical case that still has the potential to uproot affirmative action programs in public universities – one that beckoned Justice Sandra Day O’Connor to the SCOTUS pews on decision day in June of 2013 – is one you follow post-SCOTUS. Perhaps Justice O’Connor traveled all that way to throw shade to those justices likely to upend her landmark 2003 affirmative action decision, Grutter v. Bollinger. Although the spirit of Grutter remained intact, the majority’s 7-1 decision to remand the case back to a lower court was done so with explicit instruction that the University prove they’d satisfied the necessary strict scrutiny test. The same attorneys who argued the case before the SCOTUS in 2013 stayed on the case arguing before a 3-judge panel in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit.
On November 13, 2013 they, along with case namesake Abigail Fisher and the man who lobbied for the case to get into SCOTUS, Edward Blum, were back court.
Most (80%) applicants to the University get accepted through a Texas legislative program called the Top Ten Percent Plan (TTPP). If you’re in the top ten percent of your public high school, you’re automatically accepted to the UT. Abigail Fisher had solid grades but attended an academically competitive school and wasn’t a top ten-er (she was, however, in the top 12%). Fisher was pushed into the general applicant pool where a holistic admissions process is used. Because Texas public schools have become increasingly segregated, many of which are majority-minority schools, the TTPP has diversified UT’s student body in a seemingly race-neutral way. But such a plan hasn’t achieved the University’s goal of creating a critical mass of diverse students. One way the university works to achieve that goal is by employing a holistic process to admit students for the remaining (20%) seats. One subcategory, among six primary categories, uses race as a factor in determining admission through this method.
According to a piece from Joan Biskupic in Reuters, the decision would likely come down to one swing vote on the 3-judge panel. “During an hour of arguments, it appeared that the three-judge panel, which previously had ruled unanimously in favor of the university, might splinter. Judge Emilio Garza, an appointee of Republican President George H.W. Bush, appeared sympathetic to Rein’s claim that the university cannot justify using race in its decisions. Judge Patrick Higginbotham, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, implicitly defended the university. The third judge, Carolyn Dineen King, appointed by President Jimmy Carter, a Democrat, offered little clue in her few questions as to whether she might reverse her prior vote for the policy.”
It did come down to one swing vote when on July 15, 2014 Judges King and, likely swing voter, Higginbotham decided UT’s use of race for those in the holistic admissions process was narrowly tailored. Judges King and Higginbotham were satisfied that the UT could to use race as one of several factors, in the admissions process in order to further the university’s goal of creating a critical mass of diverse students.
“In sum, it is suggested that while holistic review may be a necessary and ameliorating complement to the Top Ten Percent Plan, UT Austin has not shown that its holistic review need include any reference to race, this because the Plan produces sufficient numbers of minorities for critical mass. This contention views minorities as a group, abjuring the focus upon individuals—each person’s unique potential. Race is relevant to minority and non-minority, notably when candidates have flourished as a minority in their school—whether they are white or black. Grutter reaffirmed that “[j]ust as growing up in a particular region or having particular professional experiences is likely to affect an individual’s views, so too is one’s own, unique experience of being a racial minority in a society, like our own, in which race still matters.” We are persuaded that to deny UT Austin its limited use of race in its search for holistic diversity would hobble the richness of the educational experience in contradiction of the plain teachings of Bakke and Grutter.”
Judge Garza was not persuaded that race-conscious holistic admissions processes are necessary nor have any measurable effect on achieving actual diversity.
“By accepting the University’s standing presumption that minority students admitted under the Top Ten Percent Law do not possess the characteristics necessary to achieve a campus environment defined by “qualitative diversity,” the majority engages in the very stereotyping that the Equal Protection Clause abhors.
In short, the University has obscured its use of race to the point that even its own officers cannot explain the impact of race on admission to competitive colleges. If race is indeed without a discernable impact, the University cannot carry its burden of proving that race-conscious holistic review is necessary to achieving classroom diversity (or, for that matter, any kind of diversity). Because the role played by race in the admissions decision is essentially unknowable, I cannot find that these racial classifications are necessary or narrowly tailored to achieving the University’s interest in diversity.”
On November 12, 2014 ten of the fifteen judges on the 5th Circuit bench voted not to hear an en banc appeal by Fisher’s attorneys ostensibly dealing a final blow to affirmative action opponents and to the most important affirmative action case in ten years.
Maybe.
Five days later, two complaints were filed against the University of North Carolina – Chapel Hill and Harvard University for their race-based admissions processes. The cases were filed with the help of The Project on Fair Representation, the same organization that vetted Abigail Fisher’s case for the Supreme Court. We may also see a return of the Fisher case to the Supreme Court. Edward Blum, director of The Project, has plans to appeal the 5th Circuit’s decision back to the SCOTUS.
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I think the new weekend blogger just got a really good idea of what goes on here.
Inga,
Sounds like a “pure twaddle” broken record on this thread.
LOL! Where am I?? What blog is this? Not oriented in all three spheres?
Mark, I stole that. It was so fitting.
American cheese goes w/ a cheap, stale, U.S. whine.
What, more twaddle. What is this Romper Room?
Inga – if you had any sense of social history you would realize it was John Wayne not Romper Room. However, Saul Alinsky would be proud of you. You are failing, but still trying.
Elaine. 😀
Inga,
Don’t go giving “pure twaddle” a bad name!
😉
Thanks Bettykath.
Nick doesn’t know a thing about who has “baggage” and who doesn’t here. He does not know the majority of commenters here personally. His continual attempts to make others here think he ‘knows’ personal things about other commenters just proves my point. So Paul, my observation about Spinelli’s behavior here at RIL is hardly unfounded. Nick does this as often as he can get away with it, then JT clamps down on him and he profusely apologizes, it’s a well know pattern to anyone who has commented here for any length of time. There is a section in the Civility Rules about respecting others privacy, maybe some bodies need to review it.
Inga – the Civility Rules of RIL do not apply to this. Bona fides, please.
Well said, Inga.
bettykath – so, you also talk the talk, but cannot walk the walk.
LOT’S of baggage. Needs a team of skycaps.
Zack, true that. “Cult leader”, yes Indeed, very cultish around here lately.
Paul, you don’t get to demand bona fides from other commenters. Their bona fides are NOT YOUR DAMN BUSINESS. None of my comments gives you the right to be intrusive and rude. You do NOT GET TO INVADE OTHER COMMENTER’s privacy, because you feel they made a “broad sweeping unsupported comment”, if that were the case I’d be demanding your bona fides daily. Now mind your own business.
Inga – you talk the talk but you cannot walk the walk.
Paul,
And what “broad sweeping statement” would that be that calls for you to ask for my bona fides?
This one.
Paul, no one here owes you “proof” of any sort. That is intrusive.
Inga – you made a broad sweeping unsupported statement. I am just asking you to back it up.
Paul, no commenter here has to prove their bona fides to you.
Inga – you and bettykath were talking about how you were ‘down with the struggle’ and I was just asking for proof.
Paul Schulte
Regardless of which way the field tilts, failure among a group in society denotes failure in that society as a whole. Blacks and Hispanics did not arrive on their own at their present situations. It took centuries of racism and bigotry. To snap a few fingers and make observations selective to the moment misses the point entirely. The society is only as strong as the best that rise to the top. The deeper the top the stronger the society. Presently the top in the US is extremely shallow.
Affirmative action is one necessary bookend. What will make it unnecessary is to build on the other, the beginning. When every kid gets a decent education, not to be found in the American public school system beyond roughly thirty percent, then ability will be the criterion for advancement and not money, race, or connections. First the examples, then the source. This survival of the fittest nonsense leads back into history. If taking America back(wards) is the goal then disregard what I have written.
isaac – so is it better that society is now failing whites and Asians? I have taught black and Hispanic kids. That was my specialty. They don’t need a tilted playing field. They need good or great teachers with high standards so they can compete on their own. What they don’t need is whiney liberals trying to lower the standards for them.
“Racial classifications call for strict judicial scrutiny. Nonetheless, the purpose of overcoming substantial, chronic minority underrepresentation in the medical profession is sufficiently important to justify petitioner’s remedial use of race. Thus, the judgment below must be reversed in that it prohibits race from being used as a factor in university admissions.”
http://www.law.cornell.edu/supremecourt/text/438/265
Would someone please provide or point me to the best argument explaining how the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment is NOT being violated by affirmative action? How exactly does one rationalize using discrimination as a constitutional remedy for discrimination? There has to be a reasonable legal argument that demonstrates affirmative action doesn’t mistake equality of outcome for equality of opportunity. I’m still curious to know what is the measure to determine it is necessary?
DBQ, Very good comment.