The New Orleans-based 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals will consider today whether the University of Texas at Austin’s use of race and ethnicity in its admissions policy violates the law.
Plaintiffs Abigail Fisher and Rachel Michalewicz first filed a lawsuit against the university in 2008, claiming that its race-conscious policy violated their civil and constitutional rights. It is the first major challenge of an institution’s affirmative action policy since the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a challenge to the affirmative action program at the University of Michigan’s law school in Grutter v. Bollinger.
In 2009, the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Texas upheld Grutter, writing in its opinion that as long as it “remains good law, UT’s current admissions program remains constitutional.” But Edward Blum, director of the Washington-based Project on Fair Representation, which is helping to pay the plaintiffs’ legal bills, believes the opposite is true. He said that UT’s use of race and ethnicity “falls outside of the parameters where race is allowed to be used,” the Associated Press has reported.
Josh Civin, an associate counsel for the NAACP Legal and Defense Fund will have five minutes to argue on behalf of itself and the university’s Black Students Alliance. The Obama administration also will file a friend-of-the-court brief in support of the university’s policy.
“We will emphasize the significant and real importance of the consideration of race for African-American and Hispanic students, in particular at UT, by focusing on the limited enrollment and isolation experienced by those students during the eight-year period before [it] decided to use race as a factor for its 2005 entering class,” Civin said.
Further, it is critical that a flagship university in a diverse state train and educate students to become leaders there, which is a critical part of UT Austin’s mission, according to Civin.
