Excerpts from The Texas Tribune’s The Brief on Texas Politics and Policy
UT-AUSTIN IS THE STATE’S ONLY PUBLIC UNIVERSITY AFFECTED BY SUPREME COURT’S ENDING USE OF RACE IN ADMISSIONS
On Thursday, the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that considering race in college admissions violates the U.S. Constitution, effectively ending the way many universities attempt to increase diversity and eliminating what is known as “affirmative action” in college admissions.
In Texas, the decision will largely impact the University of Texas at Austin — the only public university in the state that considered race in undergraduate admissions — and multiple private universities like Rice University in Houston and Southern Methodist University in Dallas.
In a 6-3 decision, justices found admissions policies at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill violated the 14th Amendment’s equal protection clause.
In the court ruling, Chief Justice John Roberts noted that universities can consider race but only in the context of an individual applicant’s experience with race.
“What you can’t do is say, because this student is Black and therefore adds to the diversity of the class, that makes them a more desirable candidate than someone who is not,” said Emily Berman, a constitutional law expert at the University of Houston Law Center.
Affirmative action was introduced after the Civil Rights Movement in an attempt to correct racial imbalances in education, stemming from segregation. The mechanism has been in place for nearly 60 years, but has gradually narrowed in scope.
https://www.texastribune.org/2023/06/29/supreme-court-affirmative-action-ruling-texas/
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