In December of 2015, the Supreme Court once again heard the case of Fisher v. University of Texas, a case which concerns the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The plaintiff, Abigail Fisher, applied to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008, and was denied admission. Outraged, she claimed that the university had discriminated against her because she was white, basing her argument on a supposed violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment, and proceeded to file suit. This suit brought attention to the problems that people had with affirmative action policies, and created much public debate about whether or not it is a reasonable admission plan.
The Case
For the second time, the Supreme Court is being asked to rule upon the issue of affirmative action in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas; in the original case, the ruling was in favor of the University of Texas, both when it was first brought up and when it was appealed in the Fifth Circuit. Fisher appealed again in 2013, in 2014, and has in December of last year. The decision for this appeal is expected to be made at the end of the 2015-2016 term. Below are a couple of examples of the oral arguments that were heard in court in December:
- “If the Court rules that the University of Texas can’t consider race, or if it rules that universities that consider race have to die a death of a thousand cuts for doing so, we know exactly what is going to happen. […] Experience tells us that. [When the use of race has been dropped elsewhere,] diversity plummeted.” This was the argument of the defense lawyer, Gregory Garre, in response to the claim that affirmative action should be removed from the admission process. He said “[he doesn’t] think the solution to the problems with the student-body diversity can be set up in a system in which not only are minorities going to separate schools, they’re going to inferior schools.”
- Justice Antonin Scalia responded with “there are – there are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less advanced school, a … slower track school where they do well. I’m just not impressed by the fact that the University of Texas may have fewer. Maybe it ought to have fewer.”
This entire case is based upon supposed inconsistencies with Grutter, a 2003 case that established that race should definitely have a role, albeit a limited one, in admission policies of public universities. It also takes into consideration the 1997 “10 percent plan”, which says that any student that graduates in the top ten percent of their class is automatically offered admission to UT, which was beneficial because Texas is a state that is both geographically and educationally highly segregated by race. The rest of the 25 percent of in-state students were admitted through the traditional holistic process that evaluated their entire record, excluding race.
The Public Opinion
In a survey conducted by the Washington Post in 2013, only 22% of people voted in favor of affirmative action, while a whopping 76% were opposed to race conscious admisions. This was a statistic that was consistent among all racial groups: 79% of whites, 68% oof Hispanics, and 78% of blacks opposed using race as a factor, leading ot the conclusion that the general public has officially turned against the affirmative action policy, and creating the question of whether or not it should be removed from the admission process entirely. These responses could have, however, been a result of the ambiguous wording of the Washington Post poll: they simply inquired about universities using “race as a factor”, instead of specifying that the questions were about affirmative action.
Another poll, conducted by NBC News and the Wall Street Journal revealed a slightly different public outlook. It showed that people were much less decisive on the issue: when asked the question of whether affirmative action policies were “still needed to counteract the effects of discrimination against minorities and are a good idea as long as there are no rigid quotas,” 45% of American said yes (compared to the 22% of people that were in favor of affirmative action in the previous study). 55% of Americans supported the claim that “affirmative action programs have gone too far in favoring minorities, and should be ended because they unfairly discriminate against whites.” So, despite the fact that a much larger percentage are in favor of keeping affirmative action policies as they are, the majority of the American population is in favor of eradicating them in order to reduce supposed discrimination against white people.
In other studies, it was clear that minorities were all in favor of keeping affirmative action, which makes it clear that it isn’t really the American public that is opposed to affirmative action policies; it is the white people who feel as though minorities are given an unfair advantage. There are certainly cases in which white people have failed to gain admission to elite schools because of racial preferences, but it is also true that, without affirmative action, diversity within these elite schools plummets.
In conclusion, affirmative action definitely has its issues, and has certainly been abused by elite schools that desire a certain level of diversity, or have set a quota for the number of minority students that they are going to allow into their schools. This does not mean, however, that it should be dismantled entirely, or should be considered as a mechanism to discriminate against white people, since it offers a necessary gateway to equality in school admissions.
Sources:
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/12/when-can-race-be-a-college-admissions-factor/419808/
http://prospect.org/article/where-do-americans-stand-affirmative-action
Alison Paige Kuznitz says
I wish I knew more about Fisher, particularly if she was actually an admissible candidate. You bring up some excellent points about the affirmative action debate. Personally, I believe it’s important for schools to be diverse because that really can take the learning environment to a new level. Yet, I feel other qualifications, namely grades and qualifications, should trump one’s skin color.
Abby says
I think I have heard about this case and the girl has gotten some serious backlash for these allegations on social media. Affirmative action is definitely a hot button issue and I am still not sure exactly how I feel about it.
Sylvia Joy says
That girl should have focused on studying and tried again instead of litigiously wasting time!
One interesting thing about diversity in college admissions is…even if there is diversity in the university, is there much diversity within each major, especially in STEM. I might try to research this for my blog.
I’m not exactly sure about how affirmative action “has certainly been abused by elite schools that desire a certain level of diversity.”
One thing I wonder is, what exactly is the affirmative action process within a college’s admissions office? I mean, what *exactly* do they do? How important is it in each person’s case?