Politics & Government

Supreme Court Sends Affirmative Action Case Back To Lower Courts

Justices said that the University of Texas admissions policy must be reviewed with more scrutiny.

Article By Kirsten Petersen

A Supreme Court decision Monday allows the University of Maryland and other local universities to continue to use race in determining who will be admitted--for now.

In a 7-1 decision, the Supreme Court chose not to rule on the constitutionality of affirmative action in college admissions, instead sending the case back to the lower courts for further review, according to the Associated Press.

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The ruling in the case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin delays a decision about whether school admissions policies that give preference to racial minorities violate the U.S. Constitution’s protection of equal rights, Reuters reports.

Justice Anthony Kennedy, who wrote the court opinion, said that the federal appeals court must evaluate the University of Texas admissions plan with more scrutiny before it can be reviewed again by the Supreme Court, according to the AP.

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Justice Elena Kagan did not participate, possibly because she had encountered the case while working in the Justice Department, the AP reports.

Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only dissenter, writing in her opinion that the evaluation by the 5th Circuit Court of Appeals was complete and that the university had reasonably determined that race-neutral initiatives would not achieve the “educational benefits of student-body diversity.”

Shannon Gundy, the director of undergraduate admissions at the University of Maryland, said that the ruling allows the university to continue to include race as one of 26 factors the school considers when making an admissions decision.

“It’s important to know that diversity is core to the mission of the university, and having a diverse population is essential to who we are and what we do,” Gundy said.

Gundy said that the university takes a holistic approach to reviewing applicants, and although race is not weighed as heavily as other factors, it can impact an admissions decision.

“Race is one of those factors that we want to know when making a decision about these students,” Gundy said, “but the thing we weigh most heavily is always going to be those academic factors.”

Approximately 38.4 percent of the students at the University of Maryland in 2012 identified themselves as a minority ethnicity, according to the University of Maryland Office of Institutional Research Planning and Assessment.

Among students who began their first year as freshmen at the university in 2012, 42 percent identified themselves as minorities, according to the university.

Gundy asserted that diversity leads to a more fulfilling classroom experience, adding that diverse students “bring different perspectives and challenge people to think differently.”

“When you have a classroom of people who all look alike and have the same backgrounds and experiences, the conversation in the classroom is not very robust,” she said. “We as a society have to challenge ourselves, and having diverse classrooms help us do that.”


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