The Supreme Court of the United States ruled today in a 7-1 decision that the affirmative action case Fisher v. University of Texas will be sent back down to the federal court of appeals for review. Only Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg dissented, according to Bloomberg. The case is in regards to admissions policy at the University of Texas Austin aimed at creating campus diversity. In 2008, white undergraduate Abigail Fisher brought on a suit alleging that UT’s policy is inconsistent with Grutter v. Bollinger, a 2003 ruling that race could play only a limited role in the admissions policies of public universities.
SCOTUS ruled that the lower court had not held the university to a “demanding burden of strict scrutiny” which is necessary for Supreme Court, further ruling that affirmative action could stay in practice if “no workable race-neutral alternatives would produce the educational benefits of diversity.”
You can read the opinions of the Supreme Court Justices here.
According to CBS, “The University of Texas admits about three-quarters of its students by guaranteeing a spot to any student who finishes near the top of his or her high school class. For the remainder of undergraduate admissions, race is considered as one of many factors.”
From here, the lower federal court of appeals must decide if the University of Texas’s admissions policies were the only means of gaining an appropriate racial diversity. Once that has been decided, the Supreme Court can opt to hear the case and make further rulings.
The 2003 University of Michigan case ruling led by then-Justice Sandra Day O’Connor and a much more liberal Court upheld the use of affirmative action in producing racial diversity on the campus of public universities also noting that such programs should be obsolete within 25 years, according to USA Today.
Other decisions, most notably in the Defense Against Marriage Act, Proposition 8, and the constitutionality of voting rights requirements of section 5 of the Voting Rights Act of 1965, are likely to be announced tomorrow and Wednesday at 10am ET.
