“I guess I don’t put much stock in that, because I’ve heard similar arguments for segregation,” said Justice Clarence Thomas about race-based admissions improving education.
QUICK FACTS:
- The United States Supreme Court is considering ending the ability of higher education to use an applicant’s race as a factor for college admissions.
- Students for Fair Admissions presented an oral case to the Supreme Court regarding discrimination against Asian and Caucasian applicants at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.
- “Racial classifications are wrong,” said Patrick Strawbridge, attorney for Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA).
- “That principle was enshrined in our law, at great cost, following the Civil War,” he continued.
- The argument calls for a reconsideration of the 2003 case Grutter v. Bollinger, which allows universities to use race in determining college admissions.
- UNC’s website holds that an applicant’s ethnicity is not a “dominant or defining feature” in its admissions process, but is merely “one factor among many,” including “academic performance, class rank, essays, experiences…geography, military status, and socioeconomic background.”
ARGUMENTS PRESENTED:
- Justice Thomas asked Ryan Park, the solicitor general for North Carolina, to define diversity and its educational benefits for UNC.
- Park defined diversity as playing a “truth-seeking function,” explaining that “it reduces groupthink and people have longer and more sustained disagreement and that leads to a more efficient outcome.”
- In response, Thomas said, “I guess I don’t put much stock in that, because I’ve heard similar arguments for segregation.”
- Justice Neil Gorsuch said, “I’m struggling still to understand how you distinguish between what this Court has said is impermissible, a quota, with what you argue should be permissible going forward, which is diversity.”
- Strawbridge of SFFA argued, “1.2 percent of the decisions were influenced by race,” drawing a figure presented by UNC and adding, “that’s hundreds if not thousands of applicants who are being affected by race every year. Our expert’s testimony was that race made the difference in basically 700 applications each admission cycle,” highlighting that the university receives roughly 40,000 applications.
- In the oral case against Harvard, Students for Fair Admissions lawyer Cameron T. Morris claimed Asian American applicants receive “significantly lower personal ratings” on their character than other racial groups.
- Former U.S. Solicitor General Seth P. Waxman, presenting in support of Harvard, said the personal rating “fades into the background,” and that “slight disparity was not evidence of discrimination.”
- Justice Roberts asked in response, “So there’s only a little racial discrimination in the case?” Waxman returned, “You’re asking me to answer a question that assumes that Harvard is discriminating on the basis of race? No, I can’t accept that.”
- “Isn’t that what the case is about,” Roberts questioned. “The discrimination against Asian Americans?”
BACKGROUND:
- In 2019, Pew Research released a study suggesting 73% of Americans do not believe universities should consider ethnicity in the admissions process.
- Nine states have banned affirmative action in public universities, including Arizona, California, Florida, Idaho, Michigan, Nebraska, Oklahoma, and Washington.
- American Faith reported Texas A&M was involved in legal battles after promoting an initiative excluding Asians and Caucasians from being hired.
