Austin, Texas
As African American admissions at Texas's elite public universities go into a free-fall because of the Hopwood ruling, a free-for-all has ensued over the interpretation of the court decision that ended affirmative action in higher education in the state.
Conflicting legal interpretations, clarifications and legislative attempts to undo Hopwood's effect on minority admissions to state colleges and universities have increased the acrimony and politics surrounding the 1996 Fifth U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruling. Texas Attorney General Dan Morales maintains that Hopwood bans the consideration of race in admissions, financial aid, scholarships and recruiting. Federal officials and critics argue that previous court rulings to desegregate higher education and promote diversity still apply to Texas.
As the political volleys fly across the campus at the University of Texas at Austin, where the Hopwood case originated, administrators are frustrated because African American undergraduate and law school applicants for the fall semester have declined by 21 percent from last year. White applicants declined by 14 percent, according to university figures. This fall is to be the first semester in which students will be admitted to state universities and colleges under court-mandated race-neutral policies.
The War of Words
A new source of confusion emerged late last month when Norma Cantu, assistant education secretary for the Office for Civil Rights, appeared to back away from her warning to Texas not to place too much emphasis on the Hopwood ruling. This reversal came after U.S. Senator Phil Gramm (R-Texas) threatened to block Education Department (ED) funding. Gramm accused Cantu of pursuing "a political agenda" for Texas higher education after Cantu had strongly advised Texas to give the U.S. Supreme Court's Bakke decision precedence over Hopwood. In the 1978 Bakke decision -- one of the first so-called reverse discrimination cases -- justices allowed race as a criterion in admissions in the interest of diversity.
