Op-Ed: The Supreme Court will end affirmative action. What happens next?
The Supreme Court of the United States issued its opinion in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin on Friday, which upholds state universities’ right to use race in admissions. But what will the effect be on the schools’ current policy of race-based admissions? Here’s our best guess:
You can’t hide race, and the Constitution won’t let you. Race will finally matter to the Supreme Court, and to the colleges and universities who have long used “diversity” as code for “deserving students.”
The Supreme Court could put affirmative action back into federal law.
What the Supreme Court ruled
In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the Court held unanimously that the University of Texas has the right to consider race in its admissions procedures. In a 6-3 decision, Justice Scalia, writing for the majority, said that the Court’s prior decisions “make clear that the University of Texas may consider race in its admissions program just as it may consider a student’s race in deciding whether to admit him or her to the law school.”
The majority opinion, signed by Justice Samuel Alito, also said that the University of Texas can “exercise its discretion freely” in its admissions procedures, adding that “the Fourteenth Amendment does not require the University of Texas to give preference of the racial composition of its student body to a particular race in order to secure a diverse student body.”
The only way a minority can prevent the use of race in admissions is for the justices to impose a special, individualized need standard on the University of Texas in order to create a compelling state interest.
The dissenting opinions were written by Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, Sonia Sotomayor, and Elena Kagan, and were joined by Justices Anthony Kennedy, Clarence Thomas, Samuel Alito, and John Roberts. The dissent joined by justices Kagan, Thomas and Alito argued that the University of Texas would be unable to use race in its admissions because it “cannot achieve its goal of having a racially diverse institution by admitting a disproportionate number of white students.”
The dissenting opinions make clear that Justice Alito believes the Court will eventually require
