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. Continue reading “Affirmative action in college admissions survives. For now.” →