Affirmative action

Students for Fair Admissions, led by longtime affirmative action opponent Edward Blum, challenged race-conscious admissions practices at the University of North ...

“But we are not to that 25-year point yet, right?” Barrett said. “And that’s certainly what our cases say you have to do. To which Prelogar replied: “I can’t give you a precise number, Mr. You’re more likely to be viewed as less academic as having less academic potential. “A blanket ban on race-conscious admissions would cause racial diversity to plummet at many of our nation’s leading educational institutions,” U.S. “When does it end; When is your sunset?” Justice Amy Coney Barrett, asked North Carolina Solicitor General Ryan Park who is defending UNC.

Two cases before the high court will determine whether race conscious admissions policies can be used by universities.

A decision outlawing consideration of race in college admissions could also make it harder for employers to take steps to promote equity and diversify their workforce. University of Texas, the Supreme Court reaffirmed that diversity is a “compelling governmental interest,” permitting schools to consider race as a contributing factor to admissions in higher education. Removing the consideration of race in admissions conflicts with the ability of a university to select its student body. Less diverse campuses will harm students of color and white students alike, and take us backward in our efforts to overcome the country’s shameful legacy of racism and racial inequality. A: There are two cases in which the Supreme Court will consider whether to uphold universities’ ability to consider race in college admissions: Students for Fair Admissions v. The ACLU has been at the center of nearly every major civil liberties battle in the U.S. Twice already, the Supreme Court has rejected Blum’s arguments and ruled that universities can consider race in admissions to promote diversity on campus and enrich students’ learning experience. Banning any consideration of race would hamper the growth of generations of students who will be unprepared for an increasingly diverse nation. Time and again, lower courts and the Supreme Court have recognized this. A: Race conscious policies, such as affirmative action, aim to address racial discrimination by recognizing and responding to the structural barriers that have denied underrepresented students access to higher education. The American Civil Liberties Union, ACLU of Massachusetts, and ACLU of North Carolina filed an But now, the Supreme Court could change all of this.

The court's conservative majority could end any consideration of race in admissions, a policy that universities say is essential to ensuring diversity on ...

The universities say race is just one factor that is considered as part of broad individualized analysis of each applicant. If affirmative action is ended, those defending the practice say, race-neutral policies aimed at achieving diversity will often fail, leading to a decline in Black and Hispanic enrollment. Bollinger, in which the court said race could be considered as a factor in the admissions process because universities had a compelling interest in maintaining a diverse campus. As Jackson previously served on Harvard’s board of overseers, she has stepped aside from that case and will only participate in the North Carolina dispute. Chief Justice John Roberts and Justice Brett Kavanaugh both probed whether, if race could not be considered, universities could enact race-neutral policies that were intended to lead to more racial diversity, a major potential follow-on issue were the court to end affirmative action. "If you are Black, you are more likely to be in an under-resourced school.

The justices are re-examining decades of precedent allowing affirmative action policies. This time, however, there is every likelihood that the court will ...

By a 5-to-4 vote the Supreme Court struck down the section of the law that had required areas with a history of race discrimination at the polls to pre-clear with the Justice Department any changes in voting procedures. Even as he brought a decades-long challenge to affirmative action in college admissions, he engineered a successful challenge to a key provision of the landmark 1965 Voting Rights Act. Indeed, in 2020 liberal California, by a 57% majority, voted not to reinstate affirmative action in the state's public colleges and universities. SFFA's Blum points to Harvard's history of limiting the number of Jews, by imposing a Jewish quota. And there are more briefs filed by 68 of the largest corporations in the country, and a brief filed by a long list of retired three- and four-star generals and admirals attesting to the need for racial diversity in the upper echelons of the military. But Harvard co-counsel William Lee replies that SFFA's use of Brown turns the court's 1954 schools case "on its head." "When I drilled down to that level of analysis, it became clear to me that the Framers themselves adopted the equal protection clause...in a race-conscious way," she said. Indeed, Harvard and UNC point to colorblind language that was originally proposed for the Fourteenth Amendment, and rejected by Congress. That said, the Supreme Court's new conservative super-majority presents a daunting legal mountain for UNC and Harvard to climb. They say that the lack of racial diversity in the officer corps during the Vietnam War led to enormous tensions, and even violence between the largely white officer corps and the largely black and Hispanic enlisted men, sometimes compromising the war effort. And even though Harvard is a private institution, it still is covered by federal anti-discrimination laws because it accepts federal money for a wide variety of programs. UNC, which until the 1950s refused to accept any black applicants, is now widely rated as one of the top three state colleges in the South, though like many other top universities, it struggles to have a genuinely diverse student population.

Two “race-neutral alternatives” are frequently proposed: a search for socioeconomic diversity, which is often a proxy for racial and ethnic diversity, ...

As a matter of mathematics, the system may not work in states where there are few majority-minority schools. Another model is Texas’s “Top 10 Percent Law,” effective in 1998, guaranteeing top students in Texas a place at one of the public universities. But, he goes on to say, research by the economist Raj Chetty found that Harvard has 15 times as many students from the richest one-fifth of the population as the poorest one-fifth.

It looks like it's the bottom of the 9th inning with two outs for race-conscious college admissions. But the newest Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, ...

That's the kind of argument that usually appeals to conservatives, who like to limit the number of lawsuits brought in federal courts. Brown Jackson pressed the attorney for the plaintiff how, given the complexities of the college admissions process, they could show that any given student was rejected as a result of affirmative action. First, she is suggesting the plaintiffs lack "standing" to bring the case at all. But the newest Justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, has stepped up to the plate and is swinging hard. The plaintiffs are contesting the admissions processes of Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. He's also written: "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

NPR's Ailsa Chang talks to Dominique Baker, professor at Southern Methodist University, about how effective affirmative action has been in achieving higher ...

And what we sort of see is that states that are allowed to use race-conscious admissions policies have much higher racial diversity compared to states that aren't allowed to use them. BAKER: One of the things that's really challenging about the current state of race-conscious admissions policies is that, over time, the Supreme Court has narrowed and narrowed what the focus of what was supposed to be this broad idea of affirmative action from LBJ. BAKER: Part of the challenge with this is that we have some states that have banned race-conscious admissions policies, and we have some states that are allowed to use them.

The high court heard oral arguments Monday in two cases brought by a group led by the same man who previously lost an affirmative action case against the ...

[the rate](https://www.axios.com/2022/05/15/asian-americans-diversity-education-income) falls to 32% for Vietnamese Americans and 17% for Laotian Americans. [mission](/about): creating a more engaged and informed Texas with every story we cover, every event we convene and every newsletter we send. He also [joined a brief](https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/paxton-joins-amicus-challenges-affirmative-action-policies-unc) that says UNC’s practices are unfeasible “without unlawful racial discrimination.” It remains a vital tool to promote desegregation and educational equity and is entirely consistent with Grutter,” read the brief. It claims that the ruling stands against the Fourteenth Amendment and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act, which prohibits race-based discrimination. For instance, while 75% of Indian Americans in the U.S. [Ken Paxton](https://www.texastribune.org/directory/ken-paxton/) [filed an amicus brief](https://www.texasattorneygeneral.gov/news/releases/ag-paxton-files-scotus-brief-supporting-racial-equality-college-admissions#.YGXbgGdjS9c.twitter) last year arguing that Harvard’s admission process is discriminating against Asian Americans and that the country’s top court should overturn Grutter v. “The University of Texas was wrong. Supreme Court heard back-to-back oral arguments in challenges to the race-conscious admission processes used by Harvard University and the University of North Carolina. The country’s highest court in 2016 Both cases are brought by Students for Fair Admissions, a nonprofit led by Edward Blum, who played a key role in a yearslong legal challenge to the University of Texas at Austin’s admissions policy. The court’s conservative majority appeared to lean toward ending affirmative action, while the three liberal justices defended the practice.

Since its first major decision on the subject in 1978, the court has repeatedly upheld universities' ability to consider the race of applicants as one of ...

When it first heard the case in 2013, the Supreme Court sent it back to a lower court. In Regents of the University of California v. The schools also say that their attempts to use race-neutral ways of diversifying their student bodies have been unsuccessful. The 2016 Fisher ruling came as a surprise to many. [automatically admitted Texas applicants who had completed high school in the top 10%](https://www.npr.org/2012/10/09/162565642/at-u-of-texas-a-melting-pot-not-fully-blended) of their graduating class, regardless of their race. For the remaining spots in each incoming class — about a quarter of admissions — the university considered a variety of factors, including race. At the time, the University of Michigan granted admission to any applicant who scored more than 100 points on a 150-point scale. In the words of Justice Lewis Powell, "race or ethnic background may be deemed a 'plus' in a particular applicant's file." Notably, in Grutter, the court also said that race-conscious programs should not exist permanently. But in Gratz's sister case, Grutter, brought by Barbara Grutter over her denial from the university's law school, the court upheld the basic concept behind affirmative action. At the time, UC Davis reserved 16 out of every 100 spots for qualified minority students. It's far from the first time affirmative action has been challenged in court.

Students, supporters of affirmative action protested Monday outside the U.S. Supreme Court as justices weighed two college admissions cases.

This is not the first challenge to affirmative action in college admissions. They focused on the unity between communities of color and discussed how race cannot be separated from someone’s life story and should be taken into consideration in the admissions process. Our stories may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0. Kylan Tatum, co-educational political chair at the Harvard-Radcliffe Asian American Association, said that Asian Americans like himself are being weaponized, and the group bringing the challenge to the Supreme Court “has attempted to portray Asian Americans as a monolithic group universally disadvantaged by affirmative action.” “We are standing together so that every single one of us, Asian and Black, Latino and white, Native American, people with disabilities, every single one of us gets to be looked at for admissions as the whole people we are, as the whole people we are because that is what we are talking about today,” she said. [Students for Fair Admissions](https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/), challenge the admission process that considers race as a factor when admitting students at [ Harvard University](https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/20/20-1199/169941/20210225095525027_Harvard%20Cert%20Petn%20Feb%2025.pdf) and the [ University of North Carolina](https://www.supremecourt.gov/DocketPDF/21/21-707/199684/20211111164129792_UNC%20Cert%20Petition%20-%20Nov%2011%20-%20330pm%20002.pdf), arguing that Asian American students have suffered discrimination in those admissions processes.

The Supreme Court takes on race-conscious admissions policies at Harvard and the University of North Carolina.

“The majority of Americans are not going to go to the University of Michigan or Harvard,” Krislov said. In his view, the Harvard case is unlikely to bring to a close the endless cycles of litigation. The only acceptable rationale for affirmative action was diversity—a means to expose the nation’s future leaders “to the ideas and mores of students as diverse as this Nation of many peoples.” In this light, the aspiration that Harvard outlines in its Supreme Court brief—to enhance “the education of our students” and prepare “them to assume leadership roles in the increasingly pluralistic society into which they will graduate”—is clearly riddled with hypocrisies; lots of kids get special consideration because of their wealth or background or family connections. At the same time, we must remain skeptical of these charges and how they are being used.” Affirmative action “is one of the few programs we see that is really trying to address structural inequalities,” Janelle Wong, the director of the Asian American Studies program at the University of Maryland and one of the post’s authors, told me. When he’d talked to people about the benefits of affirmative action, he always argued that the policy helped make the university more diverse. In a 2022 Pew Research Center [survey](https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/04/26/u-s-public-continues-to-view-grades-test-scores-as-top-factors-in-college-admissions/), seventy-four per cent of respondents said that race and ethnicity should not factor into college admissions at all. “It was about trying to create a society and a community that reflected the best ideals of America,” he told the students. Does one have to come at the expense of the other? That balance, and the use of affirmative action of any kind in admissions, is now up for reconsideration in two cases before the Supreme Court, which heard oral arguments on Monday. says that race is just one factor in how applications are evaluated, and that it accounts for only about one per cent of admissions decisions.) District and circuit courts ruled in both schools’ favor. In the meantime, Krislov was dispatched to defend his employer in the court of public opinion. And yet, he recalled recently, “I remember some very bright young people who, at the end of the day, were most concerned about what it meant for them.”

In 2003, a divided Supreme Court ruled in Grutter v. Bollinger that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race in its admissions process as ...

Calling universities “the pipelines to leadership in our society,” she told Strawbridge that “if universities are not racially diverse” then a broad range of other institutions – such as businesses and law firms – “are not going to be racially diverse either.” “senior military leaders” that it is critical to have a diverse officer corps – which in turn requires the consideration of race for admission to the service academies, Prelogar said. And the text of Title VI is “plain and clear” in barring discrimination based on race. If the justices believe that the lower courts were not sufficiently rigorous in reviewing the Harvard policy, Waxman said, it could send the case back to them for another look. When Waxman compared the use of race in admissions to the advantage that an oboe player might get when the university orchestra needs an oboe player, Roberts bristled. Because those preferences, Gorsuch suggested, “tend to favor the children of wealthy white parents,” should a university have to eliminate those preferences if it could then assemble a diverse student body without considering race? The universities and their supporters maintain, and the lower courts agreed, that although they have tried such programs, there is no “race neutral” program that will work as well right now to create a diverse student body. Bollinger](https://casetext.com/case/grutter-v-bollinger-et-al) that the University of Michigan Law School could consider race in its admissions process as part of its efforts to assemble a diverse student body. Bakke](https://casetext.com/case/regents-of-university-of-california-v-bakke), the court’s 1978 decision upholding the consideration of race in higher education. [Harvard College](https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-president-fellows-of-harvard-college/) and the [University of North Carolina](https://www.scotusblog.com/case-files/cases/students-for-fair-admissions-inc-v-university-of-north-carolina/) by a group called Students for Fair Admissions. Board of Education](https://casetext.com/case/brown-v-board-of-education), the Supreme Court’s 1954 landmark ruling striking down racial segregation in public schools, “finally and firmly” rejected the idea that racial classifications should be allowed to influence educational opportunities, Strawbridge said. In her opinion for the majority, now-retired Justice Sandra Day O’Connor suggested that, in 25 years, “the use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary to further the interest approved today.” But during nearly five hours of oral arguments on Monday, the court’s conservative majority signaled that it could be ready now, 19 years after Grutter, to end the use of race in college admissions.

The Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday in two cases challenging race-conscious admissions policies at the University of North Carolina and Harvard. The ...

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The Supreme Court is poised to say that colleges and universities can no longer take race into consideration in admissions programs, a decision that will ...

She made an appeal to her conservative colleagues who favor a judicial philosophy called “originalism.” It’s a doctrine that requires the Constitution to be interpreted based on the meaning the founders intended. Multiple justices asked Ryan Park, the North Carolina solicitor general who is defending the UNC admissions program, to elaborate on how to measure that a school has achieved the diversity goals that would render affirmative action unnecessary. And clearly, in some institutions, the numbers for underrepresented groups has fallen dramatically, correct?” “Your position is that race matters because it’s necessary for diversity, which is necessary for the sort of education you want,” Roberts said. For the first time in history, a Black female justice heard arguments in an affirmative action case at the Supreme Court. “It seems to mean everything for everyone.” He wondered if instead of taking race into consideration it would be permissible for the student to write an essay about how he had to deal with “huge cultural differences.” Such a position would call into question the use of even race-neutral programs. In fact, at times he went further than the other conservatives questioning whether diversity itself is even a compelling goal for schools in the first place. She wondered if Grutter was “grossly optimistic” and that in reality, schools would never stop taking race into consideration. Norris from the firm Consovoy McCarthy – are both former clerks to Thomas, a long-time critic of affirmative action. Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Samuel Alito and Chief Justice John Roberts repeatedly pushed lawyers for the schools about their efforts to build a class without taking race directly into consideration.