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VOLUME 26 ISSUE 31
Since 1989
BLACK CONSERVATIVES DEMAND END TO RACE-BASED UNIVERSITY ADMISSIONS of additional considerations to achieve their own diversity goals, factoring in things such as parental income, parental educational histories, general family history and even a Texas policy that guaranteed state-run university enrollment for students in the top percentages of their high school graduating classes. The Project 21 brief notes: There is no evidence that the University considered many of these race-neutral options, nor has it documented why these options would fail to produce a critical mass of underrepresented students and the educational benefits a diverse student body provides.
Project 21, a leader in the promotion of black conservative public policy opinion and activism, has joined a new legal brief to the U.S. Supreme Court opposing racial preferences in school admissions. Project 21 joined an amicus curiae (“friend of the court”) legal brief written by the Pacific Legal Foundation and also joined by the Center for Equal Opportunity, American Civil Rights Institute and National Association of Scholars in the case of Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, et al. This is the second time the Fisher case will come before the U.S. Supreme Court. In the case, Abigail Fisher, who is white, claimed that race preferences prevented her acceptance at the University of Texas at Austin in favor of a lesser-qualified minority applicant. In 2013 the Court ruled 7-1 that raceconscious admissions policies must be narrowly tailored in order to be constitutional, and sent the case back to the federal 5th Circuit Court of Appeals to be reheard. The Supreme Court justices told the 5th Circuit to retry the case under standards of “strict scrutiny.” The lower court sided with the University of Texas at Austin again. In July 2015, the U.S. Supreme Court accepted the case for a rehearing to determine if the 5th Circuit properly followed the Supreme Court’s instructions. A date for oral arguments at the Supreme Court has not been announced. A decision is expected by June 2016. “The Supreme Court’s earlier rulings make it clear that quotas and other kinds of broad-based racial preferences are impermissible,” said Project 21 Co-Chairman Horace Cooper, a legal commentator who taught constitutional law at George Mason University and was a
Affirmative Action protest on the Univesity of Michigan campus (file photo) Steve Carmody/Michigan Radio
“the University has failed to prove that its raceconscious program is narrowly tailored” to benefit alleged diversity goals…” leadership staff member for the U.S. House of Representatives. “One would think that, in 2015, no school would think it necessary to rely on a racial test to balance out its student body. In this case alone, however, the Court has given every opportunity for the lower court and the University of Texas itself to reassess its race-based admissions policy. Yet it appears only direct intervention by the Court will now be sufficient. The days for race-based social engineering are numbered.” Project 21’s Cooper is a University of Texas at Austin graduate. Fisher and her supporters, including Project 21, asked the Court to
determine if the lower court followed the orders of the justices to thoroughly and thoughtfully re-examine if the University of Texas at Austin’s raceconscious admissions policy is narrowly tailored and consistent with the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment of the U.S. Constitution. When the U.S. Supreme Court ruled in 2003 that race preferences for the sake of campus diversity were permissible, the University of Texas at Austin immediately instituted the race-conscious admissions policy challenged in the Fisher case. It was instituted despite other schools’ use
The brief also argues that “the University has failed to prove that its race-conscious program is narrowly tailored” to benefit alleged diversity goals because the assertion is not proven, the university has not seemed to weigh the costs and benefits of a race-conscious admissions policy nor has it proved it pursued all available alternatives to a race-conscious policy. Furthermore, the brief explained this problem is not limited to the University of Texas at Austin: There is no evidence that universities have weighed the undeniable costs of racial preferences against the benefits that purportedly result from classifying individuals on the basis of race. And there is no evidence that universities have given serious thought to whether these benefits can be achieved through race-neutral means. This demonstrates that universities nationwide continue to flout the Court’s limits on the use of race in admissions decisions. Because the situation is not unique, Project 21 and the other organizations on the PLF-written brief noted the Court must definitively address the issue of the constitutionality of raceconscious admissions policies.
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