In Affirmative Action Ruling, Supreme Court Upholds Importance of Diversity in College Admissions

With just days before the summer recess, the Supreme Court has handed down the first of four major decisions on issues of civil rights, discrimination and equality, ruling on a challenge to the use of raceconscious affirmative action in college admissions. The petitioner, Abigail Fisher, accused the University of Texas at Austin of discrimination for rejecting her college application, she says, because she is white. Many had expected the court's conservative members to seize upon the case as part of a rightwing effort to end affirmative action for good. But instead, the court came down with an opinion that gives both sides reasons to cheer. In a 7to1 decision, justices sent the case back to a federal appeals court and told it to consider affirmative action under a harsher standard. But they also refused to overturn the 2003 decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, which rejected the use of racial quotas in college admissions, but allowed for less direct methods of affirmative action in order to improve diversity. We're joined by Damon Hewitt, director of the Education Practice Group at the NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund. The group filed a number of amicus briefs in the Texas case on behalf of the Black Student Alliance at the University of TexasAustin.

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