Fisher v. University of Texas (2016)

Last updated

Fisher v. University of Texas
Seal of the United States Supreme Court.svg
Supreme Court of the United States
Argued December 9, 2015
Decided June 23, 2016
Full case nameAbigail Noel Fisher, Petitioner v. University of Texas at Austin, et al.
Docket no. 14-981
Citations579 U.S. 365 ( more )
136 S. Ct. 2198; 195 L. Ed. 2d 511
Argument Oral argument
Case history
PriorSee Fisher v. University of Texas (2013)
Holding
The race-conscious admissions program in use at the time of petitioner's application is lawful under the Equal Protection Clause. The judgement of the Fifth Circuit is affirmed.
Court membership
Chief Justice
John Roberts
Associate Justices
Anthony Kennedy  · Clarence Thomas
Ruth Bader Ginsburg  · Stephen Breyer
Samuel Alito  · Sonia Sotomayor
Elena Kagan
Case opinions
MajorityKennedy, joined by Ginsburg, Breyer, Sotomayor
DissentThomas
DissentAlito, joined by Roberts, Thomas
Kagan took no part in the consideration or decision of the case.
Laws applied
U.S. Const. amend. XIV

Fisher v. University of Texas, 579 U.S. 365 (2016), also known as Fisher II (to distinguish it from the 2013 case), [1] [2] [3] [4] is a United States Supreme Court case which held that the Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit correctly found that the University of Texas at Austin's undergraduate admissions policy survived strict scrutiny, in accordance with Fisher v. University of Texas (2013), which ruled that strict scrutiny should be applied to determine the constitutionality of the University's race-conscious admissions policy.

Contents

The decision was overturned by Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard (2023) seven years later.

Background

Plaintiffs Abigail Noel Fisher and Rachel Multer Michalewicz applied to the University of Texas at Austin in 2008 and were denied admission. The two women, both white, filed suit, alleging that the University had discriminated against them on the basis of their race in violation of the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. [5] At the time that the initial lawsuit was filed, the University of Texas at Austin accepted students in the top 10% of each Texas high school's graduating class, regardless of their race; under Texas House Bill 588, 81% of 2008's freshman class were admitted under the plan. [6] (Starting with the fall 2010 admission class, Senate Bill 175 adjusted this rule to the top 7 percent, but with no more than 75 percent of freshman slots filled under automatic admissions.) [7]

Applicants who, like Fisher, failed to gain acceptance by automatic admissions can still gain admission by scoring highly in a process that evaluates their talents, leadership qualities, family circumstances, and race. [8] [9] Fisher had a grade point average of 3.59 (adjusted to a 4.0 scale) [10] and was in the top 12% of her class at Stephen F. Austin High School. [10] She scored 1180 on her SAT out of 1600, around the average SAT score for that year (1511 out of 2400, or 1100 out of 1600). [10] [11] [12] The 25th and 75th percentiles of the incoming class at UT-Austin were 1120 and 1370, respectively. [10] Fisher was involved in the orchestra and math competitions and volunteered at Habitat for Humanity. [10]

In 2009, United States District Court judge Sam Sparks upheld the University's policy, finding that it meets the standards laid out in Grutter v. Bollinger . [13] That decision was affirmed by a Fifth Circuit panel composed of judges Patrick Higginbotham, Carolyn Dineen King and Emilio M. Garza. In his ruling, Higginbotham wrote that the "ever-increasing number of minorities gaining admission under this 'Top Ten Percent Law' casts a shadow on the horizon to the otherwise-plain legality of the Grutter-like admissions program, the Law's own legal footing aside." [14] A request for a full-court en banc hearing was denied by a 9–7 vote. [15] [16]

In September 2011, lawyers representing Fisher filed petition seeking review from the Supreme Court. [13] [17] On February 21, 2012, the court granted certiorari in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court heard the oral argument in October 2012, and handed down its decision on June 24, 2013. In a 7–1 decision, the Court vacated and remanded the Fifth Circuit's ruling. Writing for the majority, Justice Kennedy concluded that the Fifth Circuit failed to apply strict scrutiny in its decision affirming the admissions policy. Instead, he wrote, the Fifth Circuit held that Fisher could only challenge whether the University's decision to use race as an admissions factor was made in good faith. Justice Ginsburg was the lone dissenter, who argued in favor of affirming the judgment of the Fifth Circuit in its entirety.

On remand, in November, the Fifth Circuit court heard oral arguments from both sides. On July 15, 2014, the Fifth Circuit announced its decision in favor of UT Austin, with Judge Garza dissenting. Fisher sought a rehearing en banc with the Fifth Circuit which was denied on November 12, 2014, in a 10–5 decision. [18] Fisher then filed a petition for certiorari to the Supreme Court. [4] The Supreme Court again agreed to hear the case on June 29, 2015, to decide whether the Fifth Circuit's determination that the University of Texas at Austin's use of racial preferences passed strict scrutiny and can be sustained. Justice Elena Kagan again recused herself from this case due to her prior involvement as Solicitor General. [19]

Oral argument

On June 29, 2015, the Supreme Court granted Fisher's second challenge on UT Austin's admissions policy. The case was assigned docket number 14-981 and oral arguments were heard on December 9. [20] Legal analysts predicted from the justices' questions that the Court would likely either remand the case again to the lower courts for additional fact-finding, strike down UT Austin's policy, or strike down affirmative action in college admissions nationwide. [21]

During oral arguments, Justice Scalia raised the mismatching theory and questioned whether black students admitted to top-tier schools suffer because the courses are too difficult. Scalia commented: "There are those who contend that it does not benefit African Americans to get them into the University of Texas, where they do not do well, as opposed to having them go to a less-advanced school, a slower-track school where they do well. One of the briefs pointed out that most of the black scientists in this country don't come from schools like the University of Texas. They come from lesser schools where they do not feel that they're being pushed ahead in classes that are too fast for them." [22] The comments led to outcry from the University of Texas's African American students, [23] and spurred the creation of the Twitter hashtag #StayMadAbby. [24] As Justice Antonin Scalia died on February 13, 2016, and Justice Elena Kagan had recused herself, the case was decided by the seven remaining justices.

Decision

Fisher II was decided by a 4–3 decision (Elena Kagan had recused herself due to prior involvement, while Antonin Scalia died shortly before the rendering, although he opined on the case publicly). [25] The majority opinion was authored by Justice Kennedy and joined by Justices Ginsburg, Breyer, and Sotomayor. The majority upheld the lower court.

The opinion summarized that Fisher I set three controlling principles: strict scrutiny of affirmative-action admissions processes, judicial deference to reasoned explanations of the decision to pursue student body diversity, and no judicial deference for the determination of whether the use of race in admissions processes is narrowly tailored. It then noted that the University of Texas' combined Top Ten Percent-holistic admission policy is unique and data on resulting diversity was limited; however, it noted that the university should regularly evaluate available data and "tailor its approach in light of changing circumstances, ensuring that race plays no greater role than is necessary to meet its compelling interest."

The Court refused the petitioner's four arguments against the admissions policy. First, the Court upheld that the university's rationale for diversity-associated goals as "sufficiently measurable to permit judicial scrutiny of the policies adopted to reach them," [14] despite a lack of a numerical quota. The goals that the Court affirmed as sufficiently measurable included the "destruction of stereotypes," promotion of "cross-racial understanding," preparation of students for "an increasingly diverse workforce and society," and cultivation of "leaders with legitimacy in the eyes of the citizenry." Second, the court found that the university presented sufficient evidence to show that in the seven years between the Hopwood decision and the implementation of the combined academic-holistic admissions process, race-neutral policies and increased outreach efforts were insufficient to achieve these goals. Third, the court found that "consideration of race has had a meaningful, if still limited, effect on the diversity of the University's freshman class," and that such a limited effect "should be a hallmark of narrow tailoring, not evidence of unconstitutionality." Finally, the court found that the petitioner failed "to offer any meaningful way in which the University could have improved upon" its prior race-neutral efforts to achieve diversity-associated goals, including expanding the Top Ten Percent rule, which would leave, as quoted from the Grutter decision, "a gap in an admissions process seeking to create the multidimensional diversity" envisioned by the Bakke decision.

In conclusion, the majority reiterated that the University has an ongoing obligation to use available data "to assess whether changing demographics have undermined the need for a race-conscious policy; and to identify the effects, both positive and negative, of the affirmative-action measures it deems necessary."

In a lengthy dissent joined by Chief Justice Roberts and Justice Thomas, Justice Alito wrote that the university's stated interests in diversity were not sufficiently measurable and upon review were "shifting" as compared to those from Fisher I, "unpersuasive, and, at times, less than candid." Though Alito noted that the articulated goals were "laudable," he wrote that they were "not concrete or precise," and "offer[ed] no limiting principle for the use of racial preferences." Alito questioned how "a court ever be able to determine whether stereotypes have been adequately destroyed" or "whether cross-racial understanding has been adequately achieved[.]" He further noted that "[i]f a university can justify racial discrimination simply by having a few employees opine that racial preferences are necessary to accomplish these nebulous goals, . . . then the narrow tailoring inquiry [of strict scrutiny] is meaningless. Courts will [effectively] be required to defer to the judgment of university administrators, and affirmative-action policies will be completely insulated from judicial review." [14]

Additionally, Alito reiterated the circuit court dissent's claim that the Circuit Court majority believed that automatically admitted minority students were "somehow more homogeneous, less dynamic, and more undesirably stereotypical than those admitted under holistic review."

Justice Thomas also authored a dissent. In this dissent, he reiterated the thoughts expressed in his concurrence in Fisher I, namely that "a State's use of race in higher education admissions decisions is categorically prohibited by the Equal Protection Clause." [26] [27]

Analysis

Lauren Cyr of Clark University writes that while the court's decision ultimately upheld the university's race-conscious policies, it also rejected the possibility of using such policies to redress past racial discrimination; in doing so, the court affirmed earlier rulings that oriented affirmative action away from ideas of social justice and instead toward promoting multiculturalism. Cyr writes that Fisher's arguments "revived right-wing challenges to affirmative action" by "echoing long-standing assertions of 'reverse discrimination' and 'reverse racism '". [28]

Related Research Articles

Reverse discrimination is a term used to describe discrimination against members of a dominant or majority group, in favor of members of a minority or historically disadvantaged group.

Regents of the University of California v. Bakke, 438 U.S. 265 (1978), was a landmark decision by the Supreme Court of the United States that involved a dispute of whether preferential treatment for minorities could reduce educational opportunities for whites without violating the Constitution. It upheld affirmative action, allowing race to be one of several factors in college admission policy. However, the court ruled that specific racial quotas, such as the 16 out of 100 seats set aside for minority students by the University of California, Davis, School of Medicine, were impermissible.

Grutter v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 306 (2003), was a landmark case of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action in student admissions. The Court held that a student admissions process that favors "underrepresented minority groups" did not violate the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause so long as it took into account other factors evaluated on an individual basis for every applicant. The decision largely upheld the Court's decision in Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which allowed race to be a consideration in admissions policy but held racial quotas to be unconstitutional. In Gratz v. Bollinger (2003), a separate case decided on the same day as Grutter, the Court struck down a points-based admissions system that awarded an automatic bonus to the admissions scores of minority applicants.

Gratz v. Bollinger, 539 U.S. 244 (2003), was a United States Supreme Court case regarding the University of Michigan undergraduate affirmative action admissions policy. In a 6–3 decision announced on June 23, 2003, Chief Justice Rehnquist, writing for the Court, ruled the University's point system's "predetermined point allocations" that awarded 20 points towards admission to underrepresented minorities "ensures that the diversity contributions of applicants cannot be individually assessed" and was therefore unconstitutional.

The Equal Protection Clause is part of the first section of the Fourteenth Amendment to the United States Constitution. The clause, which took effect in 1868, provides "nor shall any State ... deny to any person within its jurisdiction the equal protection of the laws." It mandates that individuals in similar situations be treated equally by the law.

Lino Anthony Graglia was the A. W. Walker Centennial Chair in Law at the University of Texas specializing in antitrust litigation. He earned a BA from the City College of New York in 1952, and an LLB from Columbia University in 1954, before working in the Eisenhower administration's United States Department of Justice. He thereafter practiced law in Washington, D.C., and New York City before joining the University of Texas' law school in 1966.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Danny Julian Boggs</span> American judge

Danny Julian Boggs is an American attorney and a senior United States circuit judge of the United States Court of Appeals for the Sixth Circuit. He was appointed to the court in 1986 and served as its chief judge from September 2003 to August 2009. Boggs was on the short list of President George W. Bush's candidates for the U.S. Supreme Court.

<i>Hopwood v. Texas</i> 1996 U.S. court case

Hopwood v. Texas, 78 F.3d 932, was the first successful legal challenge to a university's affirmative action policy in student admissions since Regents of the University of California v. Bakke. In Hopwood, four white plaintiffs who had been rejected from University of Texas at Austin's School of Law challenged the institution's admissions policy on equal protection grounds and prevailed. After seven years as a precedent in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit, the Hopwood decision was abrogated by the U.S. Supreme Court in 2003.

The University of Texas School of Law is the law school of the University of Texas at Austin, a public research university in Austin, Texas. According to Texas Law’s ABA disclosures, 87.20% of the Class of 2022 obtained full-time, long-term bar passage required employment nine months after graduation.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Affirmative action in the United States</span>

In the United States, affirmative action consists of government-mandated, government-approved, and voluntary private programs granting special consideration to groups considered or classified as historically excluded, specifically racial minorities and women. These programs tend to focus on access to education and employment in order to redress the disadvantages associated with past and present discrimination. Another goal of affirmative action policies is to ensure that public institutions, such as universities, hospitals, and police forces, are more representative of the populations they serve.

Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1, 551 U.S. 701 (2007), also known as the PICS case, is a United States Supreme Court case which found it unconstitutional for a school district to use race as a factor in assigning students to schools in order to bring its racial composition in line with the composition of the district as a whole, unless it was remedying a prior history of de jure segregation. Chief Justice Roberts wrote in his plurality opinion that "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race."

Duane Edward Buck is an African-American man formerly on death row following his conviction for the shooting deaths of his ex-girlfriend Debra Gardner and her friend Kenneth Butler. He also wounded his sister, who was also at Gardner's home.

Fisher v. University of Texas, 570 U.S. 297 (2013), also known as Fisher I, is a United States Supreme Court case concerning the affirmative action admissions policy of the University of Texas at Austin. The Supreme Court voided the lower appellate court's ruling in favor of the university and remanded the case, holding that the lower court had not applied the standard of strict scrutiny, articulated in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), to its admissions program. The Court's ruling in Fisher took Grutter and Bakke as given and did not directly revisit the constitutionality of using race as a factor in college admissions.

Schuette v. BAMN, 572 U.S. 291 (2014), was a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States concerning affirmative action and race- and sex-based discrimination in public university admissions. In a 6-2 decision, the Court held that the Fourteenth Amendment's Equal Protection Clause does not prevent states from enacting bans on affirmative action in education.

Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard, 600 U.S. 181 (2023), is a landmark decision of the Supreme Court of the United States in which the court held that race-based affirmative action programs in college admissions processes violate the Equal Protection Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment. With its companion case, Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina, the Supreme Court effectively overruled Grutter v. Bollinger (2003) and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke (1978), which validated some affirmative action in college admissions provided that race had a limited role in decisions.

Whole Woman's Health v. Hellerstedt, 579 U.S. 582 (2016), was a landmark decision of the US Supreme Court announced on June 27, 2016. The Court ruled 5–3 that Texas cannot place restrictions on the delivery of abortion services that create an undue burden for women seeking an abortion. On June 28, 2016, the Supreme Court refused to hear challenges from Wisconsin and Mississippi where federal appeals courts had enjoined the enforcement of similar laws.

Edward Jay Blum is an American conservative litigant who opposes diversity programs such as affirmative action based on race and ethnicity.

Johnson v. Transportation Agency, 480 U.S. 616 (1987), is the only United States Supreme Court case to address a sex-based affirmative action plan in the employment context. The case was brought by Paul Johnson, a male Santa Clara Transportation Agency employee, who was passed over for a promotion in favor of Diane Joyce, a female employee who Johnson argued was less qualified. The Court found that the plan did not violate the protection against discrimination on the basis of sex in Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

Affirmative action refers to activities or policies that seek to help groups that are often affected by discrimination obtain equal access to opportunities, particularly in areas such as employment and education. In the United States, in the early 2000s, the use of race, gender, and other factors in college and university admissions decisions came under attack.

City of Austin v. Reagan National Advertising of Austin, LLC, 596 U.S. ___ (2022), was a United States Supreme Court case dealing with the application of zoning restrictions on digital billboards in the city of Austin, Texas. In a 6–3 ruling, the Court ruled that the Austin regulation against off-premise digital signs was content-neutral and thus should be reviewed as a facial challenge rather than a strict scrutiny following from the reasoning in Reed v. Town of Gilbert.

References

  1. ↑ "Thoughts on today's Fisher II Supreme Court oral argument on affirmative action". Washington Post. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  2. ↑ "The mystery of Fisher II review". SCOTUSblog. July 21, 2015. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  3. ↑ Kahlenberg, Richard D. (December 8, 2015). "Affirmative Action Is in Deep Trouble". The Atlantic. Retrieved April 27, 2016.
  4. 1 2 "Fisher II" reaches the Court. Scotusblog.com February 11th.
  5. ↑ Richey, Warren (February 21, 2012). "Affirmative action in college admissions goes back before Supreme Court". The Christian Science Monitor .
  6. ↑ Wermiel, Stephen (October 11, 2011). "SCOTUS for law students: Barbara Grutter, meet Abigail Fisher". SCOTUSblog.
  7. ↑ "State Adjusts UT Admissions Policy to 'Top 7 Percent'". Archived from the original on 1 October 2016. Retrieved 27 September 2016.
  8. ↑ Haurwitz, Ralph K. M. (February 21, 2012). "UT's race-conscious admission policy facing Supreme Court test". Austin American-Statesman. Archived from the original on April 29, 2012.
  9. ↑ Jeffrey Toobin. "The Other Big Supreme Court Case". The New Yorker.
  10. 1 2 3 4 5 "Joint Appendix, Abigail Noel Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (Case 11-345)" (PDF). The Supreme Court of the United States. p. 65a–66a. Retrieved October 10, 2012.
  11. ↑ Rimer, Sara (August 27, 2008). "Class of 2008 Matches '07 on the SAT". The New York Times. ISSN   0362-4331 . Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  12. ↑ Cheng, Allen. "New SAT Conversion Chart: Old 2400 to New 1600 (Official)". blog.prepscholar.com. Retrieved October 25, 2022.
  13. 1 2 Liptak, Adam (October 15, 2011). "College Diversity Nears Its Last Stand". New York Times.
  14. 1 2 3 Abigail Fisher, et al. v. State of Texas, et al. (PDF), United States Court of Appeals, Fifth Circuit, January 18, 2011, archived from the original (PDF) on February 21, 2014, retrieved April 24, 2016
  15. ↑ Farmer, Liz (February 21, 2012). "U.S. Supreme Court to hear case on UT admission policies". The Daily Texan.
  16. ↑ "Order on the petition for rehearing en banc", United States Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
  17. ↑ Petition for Certiorari Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. Retrieved June 25, 2013.
  18. ↑ 09-50822 ON PETITION FOR REHEARING EN BANC 5th Circuit Court of Appeals, (2014).
  19. ↑ Bouie, Jamelle (June 29, 2015). "Easy AA". Slate. ISSN   1091-2339 . Retrieved August 3, 2017.
  20. ↑ Sherman, Mark (June 29, 2015). "Supreme Court Will Re-Hear Texas Affirmative Action". ABC News. AP.
  21. ↑ Denniston, Lyle (December 9, 2015). "Argument analysis: Now, three options on college affirmative action". SCOTUS Blog.
  22. ↑ Mencimer, Stephanie (December 9, 2015). "Justice Scalia Suggests Blacks Belong at "Slower" Colleges". Mother Jones.
  23. ↑ Hennessy-Fiske, Molly (December 12, 2015). "For black students at Texas, Supreme Court remarks are a burden added". Los Angeles Times.
  24. ↑ Bernstein, Roberta (December 13, 2015). "U. of Texas Supreme Court fight gets hashtag: #StayMadAbby". USA Today College.
  25. ↑ "Actually, Scalia had a point". CNN . December 14, 2015.
  26. ↑ "FISHER v. UNIVERSITY OF TEXAS AT AUSTIN". LII / Legal Information Institute.
  27. ↑ "FISHER v. UNIVERSITY OF TEX. AT AUSTIN". LII / Legal Information Institute.
  28. ↑ Cyr, Lauren (2018). "Literature Review: Interdisciplinary Findings on Diversity and Inclusion". In Kim Gertz, S.; Huang, B.; Cyr, L. (eds.). Diversity and Inclusion in Higher Education and Societal Contexts: International and Interdisciplinary Approaches. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan. p. 23. ISBN   978-3-31-970174-5.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article
Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply.
Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.