A recent federal court ruling upholding race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas at Austin looms as a threat to other colleges' efforts to achieve diversity without racial preferences, several leading critics of affirmative action argue in urging that the decision be overturned.
Last month's 2-to-1 ruling in favor of Texas by a panel of judges on the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit clears the way for other colleges to abandon effective race-neutral efforts at enrolling a diverse student body, the briefs argue in urging the full Fifth Circuit to hear an appeal.
The Fifth Circuit panel had taken up the case—involving Abigail N. Fisher, a white student denied admission in 2008—for a second time after the U.S. Supreme Court held last yearthat the appeals court had not subjected the university's policies to strict enough scrutiny in dismissing Ms. Fisher's discrimination lawsuit.
In appealing the Fifth Circuit's latest decision, her lawyers have argued that a majority of judges on the panel continue to give too much deference to the university in accepting its lawyers' assertions that its race-conscious undergraduate admission policy is narrowly tailored and that it could not achieve sufficient diversity through alternative means, such as a state law guaranteeing admission to applicants in the top tenth of their high school class.
Among those who have filed briefs urging the full Fifth Circuit to reverse the panel's decision, a group of former federal civil-rights officials argues that race-neutral diversity programs at colleges throughout the nation "are now at risk" because the Fifth Circuit panel’s decision "allows governments to conclude without any factual support that such plans are insufficient to achieve the desired level and quality of diversity."
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: http://chronicle.com/blogs/ticker/texas-ruling-called-threat-to-efforts-to-move-beyond-race-in-admissions/83513