by Jeremy Leaming
The U.S. Supreme Court’s conservative majority is seemingly preparing to provide a potentially fatal blow to affirmative action policy. After the high court announced earlier today that it would consider Fisher v. Texas, a white college student’s challenge to the University of Texas’ affirmative action policy, The Huffington Post’s Mike Sacks wrote, that affirmative action was heading back to the high court “and this time its prospects for survival are poorer than ever.”
As Sacks notes, in 2003 the Supreme Court upheld by a 5-4 vote in Grutter v. Bollinger that the University of Michigan law scho
ol’s affirmative action program was constitutional. The law school’s policy, in part, was based on a longstanding commitment to “one particular type of diversity,” that is, “racial and ethnic diversity with special reference to the inclusion of students from groups which have been historically discriminated against, like, African-Americans, Hispanics and Native Americans, who without this commitment might not be represented in our student body in a meaningful manner.”
The lower federal court in the Grutter case found Michigan’s use of race as a factor in admissions was unconstitutional. The federal appeals court, however, overruled that opinion.
Retired Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O’Connor wrote the majority opinion in Grutter. She noted that part of the reason Michigan used race as a factor in higher education admissions policies was to create a richer educational experience. She said the majority would defer to the school’s “educational mission.” O’Connor noted that the briefs supporting the school “substantiated” the “educational benefits” of its affirmative action policy. Those friend-of-the-court briefs, O’Connor wrote included “expert studies and reports entered into evidence at trial,” and “numerous studies show[ing] that student body diversity promotes learning outcomes, and ‘better prepares students for an increasingly diverse workforce and society, and better prepares them as professionals.’”
O’Connor, moreover, said the law school had not employed a rigid quota system in trying to achieve its goal of bringing underrepresented minorities into the fold. “The Law School’s current admissions program considers race as one factor among many, in an effort to assemble a student body that is diverse in ways broader than race,” she wrote.
The last 10 years have brought a revolution in the election of state Supreme Court judges. Special-interest cash has become king. Most Americans fear that justice is for sale.
An American Bar Association conference scheduled for next weekend in Phoenix, Ariz. is stirring controversy in the wake of the state's passage of a new law criminalizing undocumented presence for some in the state. Many who planned to attend and support the conference are withdrawing their support as part of a