The Supreme Court today upheld the University of Texas’s use of racial preferences in student admissions. The vote was 4-3, with Justice Kennedy writing the majority opinion, joined by Justices Breyer, Ginsburg, and Sotomayor (Justice Kagan was recused). Justice Alito write a powerful, 51-page dissent, which he read from the bench.
Needless to say, for those of us opposed to racial discrimination in university admissions, the decision is disappointing, for all the reasons that Justice Alito explains. But the silver lining is that today’s decision is a narrow one.
As the Court says, UT’s program “is sui generis” and the way the case was litigated “may limit its value for prospective guidance.”
Justice Kennedy also warns the university repeatedly in his opinion that it has an ongoing duty to minimize its use of race. Race is, the Court says, only a “factor of a factor of a factor” at UT; was considered contextually; does not automatically help members of any group; and could in theory help the members of any group, including whites and Asian Americans.
Now, much of this may be quite false as a matter of what really happens at the University of Texas, but other schools are now obliged to jump through the hoops that the Court says UT jumped through.
So look at it this way: Barring a decision by the Court that overruled Grutter v. Bollinger and said that schools may never use racial preferences because the “educational benefits of diversity” are not compelling, lots of schools would continue to use such preferences, even if the Court had left the door open only a tiny crack. If the Court had said, “You can use racial preferences only if the school can prove XYZ,” then every Ivy League president would swear that, what do you know, we have found XYZ.” And it doesn’t matter what XYZ is.
That’s what the law was before today’s decision, and it remains what the law is after today’s decision. Sure, it would have been better if the Court had given the opponents of racial preferences more ammunition than it did today to attack those XYZ claims, but we still have plenty of ammunition from the Court’s earlier decisions.
The bottom line is that the Court’s decision leaves plenty of room for future challenges to racial preference policies at other schools, and at UT itself for that matter. It’s interesting that in the run-up to the decision, there was much discussion even among liberals that maybe indeed there are better approaches to student admissions that UT’s. Here’s hoping that those discussions continue, prodded along by lawsuits and FOIA requests to ensure that all of Justice Kennedy’s hoops have been jumped through.
So the challenges to racial preferences will continue; cases already filed against Harvard and the University of North Carolina–Chapel Hill that had been on hold will now proceed. And the Supreme Court has also made clear that states are free to act on their own to ban racial preferences, through ballot initiatives or legislation. The struggle goes on.
Roger Clegg is president and general counsel of the Center for Equal Opportunity, which has joined numerous amicus briefs on behalf of plaintiff over the course of the Fisher litigation.
Okay – I work at one university and my husband teaches at another. We also have four kids (3 white and 1 Chinese) I understand the concern people have over race-based admissions policies and I also believe that the current counting underrepresented students numbers game does not take into account class, which is really the issue. [Although, in the case of our Chinese-American daughter, her ethnicity may actually work against her. But that is a different issue] But here is a question that I do not see people who oppose affirmative action policies addressing: What about the preferential admissions treatment given to athletes, full-pay students (including international students) and alumni legacies? I know a kid who was a lousy high school student – never seen made it to pre-calculus or any AP or advanced course – who applied to college and got turned down everywhere except Alleghany State…and Princeton, who wanted him to play lacrosse. [He is now a proud recipient of a Princeton education). Would I prefer my kid “lose” a seat to an African-American from the Bronx than a white athlete-mediocre student from a wealthy suburb of Pittsburgh? Absolutely! DI and DII schools pick athletic ability over academic record all the time, and that same mindset is starting to creep into DIII – even if they can’t give scholarships. Schools are also rapidly dropping needs-blind admissions (Haverford being the most recent). And full-pay students from overseas, some of whom have pretty weak English language skills, are being rapidly snapped up because they are full pay.
So what are your thoughts on athletes and preferential admissions treatment?
Thanks for your question, and here’s a column I wrote on this topic.
“Race…could in theory help the members of any group, including whites and Asian Americans.”
I couldn’t overcome the absurdity of this statement, even if qualified as “in theory.”
Given the omnipresence of academic departments and student organizations for non-white races, I don’t expect this decision to ever render a benefit to white students.