There is a challenge to the use of race as a factor in college admissions coming to the Supreme Court on Monday.

There is a press release at https://studentsforfairadmissions.org/students-for-fair-admissions-files-opening-brief-at-u-s-supreme-court-in-students-for-fair-admissions-v-harvard-and-students-for-fair-admissions-v-university-of-north-carolina/

Since it is a press release and meant to be reproduced for all to see, here is the press release:

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Today, Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), a nonprofit organization with over 20,000 members, filed its opening brief in two cases pending before the U.S. Supreme Court: Students for Fair Admissions v. Harvard and Students for Fair Admissions v. University of North Carolina.

In November 2014, SFFA filed federal lawsuits against Harvard, the nation's oldest private college, and the University of North Carolina, the nation's oldest public university, alleging that both schools were engaged in unfair, polarizing, and illegal racial discrimination in their admissions policies.

Furthermore, SFFA petitioned the justices to overrule Grutter v. Bollinger, and hold that all institutions of higher education cannot use racial or ethnic classifications and preferences as factors in admissions.

Regarding Harvard, SFFA notes that the college is violating Title VI of the Civil Rights Act by penalizing Asian-American applicants, engaging in racial balancing, overemphasizing race, and rejecting workable race-neutral alternatives. Harvard's demerits of Asian-American applicant's personalities are particularly scandalous and inexcusable. Harvard penalizes them because, according to its admissions office, they lack leadership and confidence and are less likable and kind.

Regarding the University of North Carolina, SFFA notes that the university is violating the U. S. Constitution and Title VI by illegally rejecting a race-neutral alternative to racial admissions preferences because the composition of its student body would change, without proving that the alternative would cause a dramatic sacrifice in academic quality or the educational benefits of overall student-body diversity. UNC rejects any race-neutral alternative, even if those alternatives would improve overall student body diversity.

While Harvard and UNC have breached the current legal boundaries that narrowly permit racial classifications and preferences in college admissions, the legal opinion in Grutter allowing these policies was wrong on the day it was decided on June 23, 2003.

Grutter is also internally contradictory. It claims that racial preferences improve diversity because race is a proxy for certain views and experiences. Then it claims that racial preferences break down stereotypes because race is not a proxy for any views or experiences. The latter is, of course, true: A person's skin color says nothing about who they are, what they think, or where they've been. Yet this is a "lesson of life" learned by most at an early age. And if a student's views aren't tied to his or her race, then why would the racial makeup of a class predictably change what students learn or discuss? Grutter has no answers.

No one is under any illusions that we live in a post-racial society, or that racial discrimination is a thing of the past. But when our most elite universities place high-schoolers on racial registers and tell the world that their skin color affects what they think and know, what they like and don't like, they are hurting, not helping.

Edward Blum, president of Students for Fair Admissions said, "Recent surveys (2022) by the Pew Research Center reveal that 74% of all Americans do not believe a student's race should be a factor in college admissions." The Pew Research report noted:

About eight-in-ten White adults (79%) say race or ethnicity should not factor into admission decisions. By comparison, 68% of Hispanic adults say this, as do about six-in-ten Asian American (63%) and Black (59%) adults. And while 87% of Republicans say race or ethnicity should not be a factor in admissions, that share falls to 62% among Democrats.

Blum added, "In a multi-racial, multi-ethnic nation like ours, the college admissions bar cannot be raised for some races and ethnic groups but lowered for others. Our nation cannot remedy past discrimination and racial preferences with new discrimination and different racial preferences."

Blum noted, "These two cases now at the U.S. Supreme Court are rescue missions for the colorblind legal principles that hold together Americans of all races and ethnicities.

Blum concluded, "The ancient faith that gave birth to our nation's civil rights laws is the principle that an individual's race should not be used to help or harm them in their life's endeavors. It is the hope of the vast majority of all Americans that the justices end these polarizing admissions policies."

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Let's hope the Supreme Court agrees with the Students for Fair Admissions.

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Blum noted, "These two cases now at the U.S. Supreme Court are rescue missions for the colorblind legal principles that hold together Americans of all races and ethnicities.

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They gave it all back in one word. The left has successfully created a negative connotation for the word "colorblind", unbelievably. A word that their liberal forbears couldn't say often enough. Leftists hate this term now and will simply say all of the above is "White supremacy".

The real shot at fixing this is finally someone bringing good plaintiffs against a public university.

one MEEN Ag said:

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The real shot at fixing this is finally someone bringing good plaintiffs against a public university.

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It looks like it took these plaintiffs eight years to get it to the Supreme Court.

I think that to get to the Supreme Court, a case in which the Supreme Court does not have original jurisdiction will have to work up through the appeals courts. I wonder what the lower courts decisions were.

There is a brief at the organizations web site, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Perhaps that will provide the information on how the lower courts decided.

Affirmative action is faux attempt to convert universities into eleemosynary institutions.

The way to stop discrimination based upon race is to stop discriminating based on race.
It's pretty simple.

eric76 said:

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one MEEN Ag said:

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The real shot at fixing this is finally someone bringing good plaintiffs against a public university.

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It looks like it took these plaintiffs eight years to get it to the Supreme Court.

I think that to get to the Supreme Court, a case in which the Supreme Court does not have original jurisdiction will have to work up through the appeals courts. I wonder what the lower courts decisions were.

There is a brief at the organizations web site, but I haven't had a chance to read it yet. Perhaps that will provide the information on how the lower courts decided.

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The same lawyer who is leading the charge here brought suit against UT about a decade ago. If y'all remember the star defendant was a white girl, who opted to not be anonymous, and she had been rejected by UT and went to texas state instead.

Not only did that girl get absolutely roasted by the media at large, but she was a weak plaintiff. UT lawyers were easily able to prove that she did not exist within a category that was discriminated against. She didn't have good enough grades to prove that UT rejected her based upon her race. They absolutely rejected her based upon merit, and race might have played a factor but they are allowed to have race be a contributing, but not defining, factor.

Then the lawyer learned from his mistakes, reloaded and sued harvard with like 8 or 9 1600 SAT scorers who were valedictorians, and all asians (or at the very least non whites as he has stated in an interview).

And that's when it came out that Harvard was using a 'holistic' review process to descore asians on their personality, but give black kids huge boosts to their personality scores. But Harvard has survived because they are a private institution, and they don't discriminate against Asians. There are clearly asians at Harvard.

This will hopefully bring the whole thing crumbling down.

From https://www.reuters.com/legal/behind-us-supreme-court-race-cases-contested-push-color-blindness-2022-10-28/

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The U.S. Supreme Court's first Black woman justice, Ketanji Brown Jackson, wasted no time making clear her views on race. On her second day of hearing arguments on the court, Jackson said the U.S. Constitution is not "race blind" and that governments may consider race to ensure that people are treated equally.

Jackson's conservative colleagues could make that much more difficult as America's top judicial body considers three major race-related disputes during its current nine-month term. All three involve arguments by conservatives asserting that taking race into account, even when intending to benefit people who have endured discrimination, violates the U.S. Constitution's guarantee of equal protection under the law.

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He Who Shall Be Unnamed said:

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The way to stop discrimination based upon race is to stop discriminating based on race.
It's pretty simple.

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but if you did that how will democrats survive?

They need to remove race entirely from the application forms.

Make the decisions based on qualifications.

93MarineHorn said:

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Blum noted, "These two cases now at the U.S. Supreme Court are rescue missions for the colorblind legal principles that hold together Americans of all races and ethnicities.

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They gave it all back in one word. The left has successfully created a negative connotation for the word "colorblind", unbelievably. A word that their liberal forbears couldn't say often enough. Leftists hate this term now and will simply say all of the above is "White supremacy".

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Have they successfully created such negative? Only if you accept `Leftese' as your language. With Twitter liberated, it will be interesting to see what words like colorblind regain their stature.

From the Harvard Gazette, https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2022/10/what-to-know-about-harvards-case-in-supreme-court/

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How does Harvard consider race during admission?

Admissions at Harvard are highly competitive. This year, 61,000 applicants vied for fewer than 2,000 spots in the Class of 2026. The process involves a comprehensive, whole-person review of each applicant requiring months to complete. Admissions officers examine and consider a range of information, including academic achievements and extracurricular activities. Personal essays, recommendations from teachers and guidance counselors, and applicant interviews are also considered by a diverse, 40-person committee. Race is one factor in determining what makes an applicant unique and what they might bring to the Harvard community. Testimony at trial established that race only ever functions as a plus factor and is never used to deny qualified applicants' admission.

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What might future Harvard classes look like in a race-blind system?

The proportion of the class that identifies as African American and Hispanic would decline significantly if Harvard eliminated race as a factor in admissions, evidence presented at trial showed. Additionally, when experts simulated the racial makeup of the class, replacing the consideration of race with "race-neutral alternatives," they found that Harvard would not be able to reach the same levels of diversity it achieved through the limited consideration of race as one factor among many.

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So Harvard tries to make it seem like their racial criteria are minor, yet they whine about how much it will change at Harvard if the Supreme Court decides against them.

If it would have that large of an affect, how would their current admissions be a "limited consideration of race"?

Reminder: This cannot be a 5-4 decision not any total of nine justices voting.

Ketanji is recused. She's on the Board at Harvard and approved the policy. She's a fact witness.

C@LAg said:

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it is a shame we have a racist like her on the Supreme Court.

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Indeed it is. Completely unqualified. So is Sotomayor.

C@LAg said:

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if you are a public school or take govt money at any level (incl grants) -admissions should be colorblind.

if you are entirely private, with no govt funding anywhere - knock yourself out being however colorblind you want to be.

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Good point.

From https://finance.harvard.edu/endowment

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Even with endowment support, Harvard must fund nearly two-thirds of its operating expenses ($5.4 billion in fiscal year 2022) from other sources, such as federal and non-federal research grants, student tuition and fees, and gifts from alumni, parents, and friends.

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aggiehawg said:

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Reminder: This cannot be a 5-4 decision not any total of nine justices voting.

Ketanji is recused. She's on the Board at Harvard and approved the policy. She's a fact witness.

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Is she known to have recused herself? Sotomeyer should have recused herself on Obamacare but she didn't. The whole Obamacare legislation would have been thrown out without her 'vote.'

Came up during her confirmation hearings. She agreed she would recuse and told Roberts she would as well upon being sworn in.

Incredible to me anyone can support these policies. Hopefully, Harvard and UNC get their ass handed to them.

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Sotomeyer should have recused herself on Obamacare but she didn't. The whole Obamacare legislation would have been thrown out without her 'vote.'

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Not trying to excuse Sotomayor or Kagan here, but being Solicitor General is still akin to being a puppy attorney in practice. You argue what you are told to argue. End of discussion on that point.

This should have been overturned years ago. Let's hope it's overturned and actually enforced.

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The same lawyer who is leading the charge here brought suit against UT about a decade ago. If y'all remember the star defendant was a white girl, who opted to not be anonymous, and she had been rejected by UT and went to texas state instead.

Not only did that girl get absolutely roasted by the media at large, but she was a weak plaintiff. UT lawyers were easily able to prove that she did not exist within a category that was discriminated against. She didn't have good enough grades to prove that UT rejected her based upon her race. They absolutely rejected her based upon merit, and race might have played a factor but they are allowed to have race be a contributing, but not defining, factor.

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Really not sure what you are talking about here. UT was sued by Abigail Fisher and Rachel Machelawicz. UT admitted race was used as a factor. Fisher ended up at LSU and Machelawicz eventually got her law degree from SMU Law.

The USSC affirmed ultimately in Fisher II after overturning the original 5th Circuit opinion and found that race could still be used as a factor in admissions.

I'm not anything close to a lawyer.

That said, isn't Harvard, as a private school, in the same position as the bakery that did not want to bake a cake for gay/trans? As I'm totally supportive of the bakery position, it seems I would support Harvard's position as well.

Other than a brain, what am I missing?

There are so many people in positions of power in universities it doesn't matter. They will do what they want to do.
They have found ways around traditional check boxes like Elizabeth Warren and Sheila Jackson Lee used.

tunefx said:

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I'm not anything close to a lawyer.

That said, isn't Harvard, as a private school, in the same position as the bakery that did not want to bake a cake for gay/trans? As I'm totally supportive of the bakery position, it seems I would support Harvard's position as well.

Other than a brain, what am I missing?

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Harvard accepts massive amounts of federal taxpayer money.

tunefx said:

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I'm not anything close to a lawyer.

That said, isn't Harvard, as a private school, in the same position as the bakery that did not want to bake a cake for gay/trans? As I'm totally supportive of the bakery position, it seems I would support Harvard's position as well.

Other than a brain, what am I missing?

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I can see that, although it's also a bit different given Harvard receives a ton of public grant money from Feds and is a pipeline into elite business and government jobs.

So not some rinky dink mom and pop business.

Teslag said:

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tunefx said:

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I'm not anything close to a lawyer.

That said, isn't Harvard, as a private school, in the same position as the bakery that did not want to bake a cake for gay/trans? As I'm totally supportive of the bakery position, it seems I would support Harvard's position as well.

Other than a brain, what am I missing?

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Harvard accepts massive amounts of federal taxpayer money.

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To you and Seratonin, thanks. Didn't think about that. Brain re-engaged!

Don't forget about federal student aid. That's a drop in the bucket compared to the research grants and funding they receive.

Texasaggie32 said:

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This should have been overturned years ago.

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Thanks KBH

Teslag said:

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tunefx said:

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I'm not anything close to a lawyer.

That said, isn't Harvard, as a private school, in the same position as the bakery that did not want to bake a cake for gay/trans? As I'm totally supportive of the bakery position, it seems I would support Harvard's position as well.

Other than a brain, what am I missing?

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Harvard accepts massive amounts of federal taxpayer money.

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Not only this, but Harvard sends a ton of grads directly into the federal government, AND Harvard has a ton of contractual relations with the federal and state governments not related to admissions. Private entities which have such extensive and intentional connections to government cannot then complain of government oversight. They are not a quasi-governmental entity, but they have agreed to abide by its regulations.

tunefx said:

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I'm not anything close to a lawyer.

That said, isn't Harvard, as a private school, in the same position as the bakery that did not want to bake a cake for gay/trans? As I'm totally supportive of the bakery position, it seems I would support Harvard's position as well.

Other than a brain, what am I missing?

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I wonder how many colleges and universities in the US receive no federal funding.

Even for community colleges, there are plenty of sources. See https://www2.ed.gov/about/offices/list/ovae/pi/cclo/federal-grant-opportunities.html

The Washington Post has an article about what the Supreme Court justices have said in the past about such policies.

From www.washingtonpost.com/politics/2022/10/29/supreme-justices-affirmative-action-statements/

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Roberts has questioned race-conscious government policies since his time as a young lawyer in the Reagan administration, where he took a skeptical view of the Voting Rights Act.

His criticisms quickly became part of his record at the Supreme Court. During his first term, he dissented in a case about drawing congressional districts to favor the ability of minority groups to elect a candidate of their choice. "I do not believe it is our role to make judgments about which mixes of minority voters should count for purposes of forming a majority in an electoral district," Roberts wrote, adding, "It is a sordid business, this divvying us up by race."

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Thomas has mostly advocated for a "colorblind" view of the Constitution that sees almost all government considerations of race to be a form of racial discrimination.

He dissented when the court upheld the limited use of race in college admissions in Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003. "Like [Frederick] Douglass, I believe blacks can achieve in every avenue of American life without the meddling of university administrators," Thomas wrote. "Because I wish to see all students succeed whatever their color, I share, in some respect, the sympathies of those who sponsor the type of discrimination advanced by the University of Michigan Law School. The Constitution does not, however, tolerate institutional devotion to the status quo in admissions policies when such devotion ripens into racial discrimination."

When the court approved a similar program at the University of Texas 13 years later, Thomas said in a dissent that Grutter should be overturned.

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Alito joined Roberts's opinion in the Seattle and Louisville cases, has supported narrowing the Voting Rights Act's application to election procedures and majority-minority congressional districts, and has been a consistent vote against affirmative action.

While he has not joined Thomas's call to overturn Grutter, he wrote the lead dissent in the University of Texas case.

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Sotomayor, the Supreme Court's first Latina justice, has established herself as an outspoken advocate of affirmative action as both a personal and legal matter.

She has called herself a "perfect affirmative action baby" raised in New York housing projects where English was not her family's primary language. Her test scores alone probably would not have merited her admission to Princeton and Yale Law School, she said. "The question is not: How did I get in? It's: What did I do when I got there?" she said in a 2018 speech. "And with pride, I can say I graduated at the top of my class."

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Kagan has been a steadfast defender of a robust reading of the Voting Rights Act. During oral arguments earlier this month, she said it was "one of the great achievements of American democracy to achieve equal political opportunities regardless of race, to ensure that African Americans could have as much political power as White Americans could."

She has written stinging dissents to the court's decisions that make it harder to use that law to challenge state election laws, including in a 2021 case.

"If a single statute represents the best of America, it is the Voting Rights Act," Kagan wrote, adding: "If a single statute reminds us of the worst of America, it is the Voting Rights Act. Because it wasand remainsso necessary."

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Gorsuch dissented in April when the Supreme Court allowed a prestigious high school in Virginia to continue, for now, an admissions policy that administrators said opened the magnet program to a wider socioeconomic range of students. Gorsuch, along with Alito and Thomas, would have granted the request from a parents group to suspend the policy at Thomas Jefferson High School for Science and Technology, which challengers said discriminates against Asian American students. The dissenters did not explain their disagreement, which is not unusual in emergency applications.

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As a lawyer in private practice, Kavanaugh wrote an amicus brief with conservative lawyer Robert H. Bork in a case challenging a race-based voting qualification in Hawaii. In a Wall Street Journal column, Kavanaugh characterized as a "naked racial-spoils system" the state's requirement that only Native Hawaiians vote for trustees of a state office. He quoted Justice Antonin Scalia, the late conservative, in urging the court to follow the principle that "under our Constitution there can be no such thing as either a creditor or debtor race. … In the eyes of government, we are just one race here."

Kavanaugh was serving then as an advocate, not a judge. On the bench, he has made a concerted effort to hire young lawyers from diverse backgrounds to work with him as law clerks and signaled in his rulings a sensitivity to racial discrimination.

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In response to questions during her 2020 confirmation hearings, Barrett talked about persistent racism in the United States and the death of George Floyd, the Black man whose murder at the hands of police sparked protests across the country. She called the issue highly personal and difficult, and part of an ongoing conversation, noting that she is the mother of two Black children adopted from Haiti. But she declined to opine on policy or legal solutions.

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While Jackson has not previously ruled in an affirmative action case, she has faced questions about her views. As a candidate to join the Harvard board in 2016, she declined to comment on the school's admissions policy in a campaign survey, citing her role as a federal judge who might someday have to rule on the issue.

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Ultimately, I think that should be considered in light of whether it is the proper role of government to achieve desired outcomes. If the proper role of government is to achieve desired outcomes, then the country is really in trouble. It needs to concentrate on opportunity to all based on hard work and ability, not superficial issues like race. Students applying to colleges should be considered as individuals, not members of a race.

From www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/11/07/education-after-affirmative-action

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When Harvard went to trial, in 2018, it said that the consequences of not considering applicants' race would be dire: fewer than half the Black students and fewer than two-thirds of the Hispanic students admitted to the class of 2019 would be accepted. But, if affirmative action is ruled unlawful, Harvard and other schools will surely not abandon their commitment to diversity, which they understand as indispensable to the educational missionin part because the Court itself has said so for decades, holding, in Bakke and in Grutter, that promoting diversity is a "compelling interest." Those schools will then need to turn to a variety of methods that are race-neutral but may still help to achieve racially diverse results.

One of the most widely discussed of those methods involves standardized tests. The pandemic gave Harvard and other top universities an urgent reason to make the submission of SAT and ACT scores optional, but more could follow the University of California system, which last year ended the consideration of all standardized-test scores in a settlement with students who alleged that the tests disadvantaged, among other groups, racial minorities (excepting Asians). Another possibility is to promote students from low-income families or neighborhoods, or from poorly funded schools, which have a high concentration of underrepresented minorities. But the coming years will undoubtedly bring an onslaught of litigation about whether strategies designed to produce a diverse class without using applicants' race are themselves unlawful.

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So if they can't use race as a factor, they will just switch to other factors that are associated with race to try to achieve the same thing? As the final sentence mentions, I thought that trying to get around it in that manner was equally as illegal.

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So if they can't use race as a factor, they will just switch to other factors that are associated with race to try to achieve the same thing? As the final sentence mentions, I thought that trying to get around it in that manner was equally as illegal.

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It's called disparate impact. You have to prove it with statistics, so it's a much harder case to make.