Landmark affirmative action case back in court
Back in June, the U.S. Supreme Court faced an issue that it has decided on countless times. Affirmative Action and whether or not colleges and universities should consider a person’s race when admitting them.
The case was Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, and the justices could not come to a conclusion. Six years ago, Abigail Fisher filed a lawsuit arguing that she was rejected from the university because it favored minorities.
The justices returned the case to the lower court that had previously upheld the school’s affirmative action program, instructing them to rule on whether or not the university had “adequately considered other methods that did not use race, such as those more focused on family income, in its efforts to diversify the student body.”
On Wednesday, just a mile south of the sprawling flagship campus here, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 5th Circuit once more became ground zero for a crucial battle over race. And again it seemed that the opponents of affirmative action could lose at this level – potentially sending the deeply fraught issue back up to the Supreme Court.
The University of Texas currently admits most of its freshmen through the “Top Ten Percent” program, one that automatically accepts high school seniors in roughly the top 10 percent of their class. The rest are evaluated on factors such as race, socio-economic status, hardships at home and disability.
A recent study shows that white women benefit more from affirmative action than any other group of people.
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