By Hakeem McGee ’13, Contributor
On Weds, Oct. 10, the Supreme Court once again considered the controversial topic of affirmative action. The decision in this case is crucial, as it may not only affect minority admission to college, but may also affect employment. In the case Fisher v The University of Texas Austin, a widely-used structure of accepting minority students in admissions is threatened. Abigail Fisher is using the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment and the Title VI Civil Rights Act of 1964, which does not allow racial discrimination in programs receiving federal money. The university is using the precedent of Grutter v Bollinger, a 2003 case which mandated that admissions was allowed to take race into consideration but must use a vaguer tool than assigning points to applicants based on their race.
When the Supreme Court heard arguments yesterday, Country Day 8th grader Heman Duplechan was in the balcony, as his grandfather is a part of history. In 1950, before the infamous Brown v. Board of Education, his grandfather Heman Sweatt tackled the issue of separate but equal, in the Supreme Court case Sweat v Painter. Thurgood Marshall, then attorney for the NAACP, argued that Mr. Sweatt was denied admissions to the University of Texas Law School because of their “no negro policy.” Texas provided a separate law school for negro students at Texas Southern University but Mr. Sweatt’s case argued that it wasn’t equal to the quality of teachers, facilities and resources available at UT Austin. Ironically, Mr. Sweatt won his case with the same law Abigail Fisher is defending, which is the Equal Protection Clause in the 14th Amendment. The court stated that because the other law school did not have the same facilities as that of UT Law School, that it is unconstitutional to have a separate law school at all. In the end, Mr. Sweatt was accepted to UT Law School.
Heman Duplechan said he was honored to attend the case hearing in Washington, Wednesday. “It makes me feel special because my grandfather opened doors for people to follow through,” Heman said. “I wouldn’t be able to go to this school if his case didn’t go through.”
Heman stated that outside of the courthouse there were rallies on both sides of the argument, and intense speeches, while inside the courtroom was more subdued. During arguments, he said, “The lawyers were interrupting each other a lot. Sometimes the justices would say something funny and everyone would laugh.” At the rallies outside “People were getting fired up.”
Race-conscious admissions policies at many colleges, designed to bring more minority students to campus, are under fire in the Fisher v University of Texas case. For the past 20 years, the University of Texas has used the Top 10% Rule in an attempt to increase minority population on campus. The rule is a result of a 1997 state law mandating that any in the top 10% of their graduating class receives an automatic admission to any state university in Texas, regardless of standardized test scores. For students not in the top 10%, the university uses a holistic admission approach. In this approach, the
entire individual is evaluated instead of just focusing on GPA and test scores. The purpose of this structure is to bring in more students who will add to a campus’s environment, through multiple facets of diversity.
Abigail Fisher did not meet the top 10% standard as she attended a competitive high school, and she was not accepted through holistic admissions. In 2008—the year Fisher applied to UT—of the seats allocated for Texas residents, 88% were accepted under the Top 10% Rule. The University of Texas officials have said that the top 10% rule has increased the minority population, but not nearly as much as when the point system was used in the early 1990s.
The Supreme Court could dismantle affirmative action completely in the Fisher case. In the 2003 case Grutter v Bollinger, the Supreme Court mandated that it is unconstitutional to use a point system, but rather a vaguer tool should be in place. Because of the retirement of Justice Sandra Day O’ Conner in 2006, the conservative judge Samuel Alito became her replacement. The court is now considered to be more conservative; therefore more likely to strike down affirmative action. In 2007, the newly appointed Chief Justice John G. Roberts said in the case Parents Involved in Community Schools v. Seattle School District No. 1: “The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race.” If the Supreme Court rules in favor of the plaintiff, it overturns Grutter v Bollinger and stops the use of affirmative action at public universities during admissions. Because the Fisher case invokes the Title VI Civil Rights Acts, which governs any institution that accepts federal money, every college in the country could be affected.
