Free Republic

Abigail Fisher, the plaintiff in the latest round of affirmative action cases heard before the Supreme Court, is the perfect villain in a liberal morality play about the evils of racism.

On May 21, the Supreme Court held a conference to discuss whether or not to accept the Fisher case—again. At this time, I don’t know the decision, but I do know that a seemingly strange mixture of liberals and conservatives want the Court to take the appeal. The case first came before the Court in 2013, where the justices reversed the Fifth Circuit’s ruling in favor of the racial preferences used by the University of Texas (UT) in its admissions. Justice Kennedy’s opinion stressed that the lower court had been far too deferential towards the university’s policy of reserving some...

Thirty-five years after the Supreme Court set the terms for boosting college admissions of African Americans and other minorities, the court may be about to issue a ruling that could restrict universities' use of race in deciding who is awarded places. The case before the justices was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white suburban Houston student who asserted she was wrongly rejected by the University of Texas at Austin while minority students with similar grades and test scores were admitted.

In 2003, the Supreme Court held that the University of Michigan's law school could substantially relax its admissions standards in order to admit a "critical mass" of African-American and Hispanic students. Many observers interpreted that decision — Grutter v. Bollinger — as an open-ended embrace of affirmative action. The University of Texas was among the many universities emboldened to ramp up its use of race-preferential admissions policies. In 2003, the university already had in place an admissions policy designed to raise the number of under-represented minority students attending its flagship campus in Austin by admitting the "top 10%" of the graduates of each...

The Supreme Court heard arguments Wednesday in the latest battle over racial discrimination in the college admissions process. The case at hand centers on Abigail Fisher, who was denied admission to the University of Texas at Austin but claims her grades and extra-curricular activities were far superior to those of students chosen ahead of her. Why? Fisher said it’s because she is white and was a victim of the university’s preference toward minority students. School leaders do not deny using race as a criterion but will not say how much of a factor that is in their admission decisions. Last...