A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit heard oral arguments today in a lawsuit challenging the use of race-conscious admissions by the University of Texas at Austin, the Austin American-Statesman reported, but the judges gave little indication of how they might rule. According to the Associated Press, a lawyer for the university argued that its admission policy was carefully tailored to conform with the limitations on such policies spelled out by the U.S. Supreme Court in a 2003 ruling involving the University of Michigan’s law school. Lawyers for the students challenging the policy argued that it appeared to be designed simply to increase minority representation, and was not justified based on any educational benefits. The case came before the Fifth Circuit on an appeal of a U.S. District Court decision last year to throw out the lawsuit.
Follow The Ticker through your favorite RSS reader.
6 Responses to Federal Appeals Judges Hear Arguments in Texas Affirmative-Action Case
philprosseda - August 3, 2010 at 5:28 pm
A case to watch.
henr1055 - August 3, 2010 at 9:08 pm
Maybe a court will determine if a university sponsors a sport that is NCAA that it will count in the bean counting of men and women’s sports expecially since there is no women’s sport that carries 100 players and has 90 full scholarships.TH
rightwingprofessor - August 4, 2010 at 12:47 pm
Maybe someone can tell me why the child of an immigrant from Kenya should get preferences equivalent to almost a 500 point SAT boost compared to the child of an immigrant from Vietnam. The black applicant with an 1100 SAT will have the same chance of admission as the asian applicant with a 1570. Both first-generation Americans, neither have any ancestors effected by slavery. It is entirely shameful.
betsyboze - August 4, 2010 at 1:07 pm
While I strongly believe that diversity in all its forms is important for our colleges and universities, there are certainly some odd beneficiaries of affirmative action. In Texas a few years ago, several of my childrens’ friends claimed ethnicities to receive admissions and scholarship preferences. * The white son of an affluent Jewish Spanish/ Moraccan immigrant and a French Canadian claimed African American status on admissions and scholarship applications. * One from Singapore claimed to be a “Pacific Islander.” * Several claimed to be Hispanic under dictionary definitions (these from Education.Yahoo): ADJ: Of or relating to a Spanish-speaking people or culture. NOUN: A Spanish-speaking person.While they DID speak Spanish and live in a heavily Hispanic region, Morocco is in Africa and Singapore in the Pacific, giving them special treatment likely disadvantaged other qualififed students.
amnirov - August 4, 2010 at 7:13 pm
All affirmative actions laws should be struck down. Discrimination is discrimination.
performance_expert2 - August 4, 2010 at 7:19 pm
My friend, a white male from a struggling single parent home did not apply to the public university law schools of his choice and instead attended a very good university, though private, who would accept his as a student. He basically there was no chance in hell that he would be able to attend the premier public university law schools due to his status as a white male. He got through, finished his program, and likely was not distracted by a professor berating him about “white privilege” as has been my experience in a public university graduate program. This type of harassment is a real adjustment and there is really no recovery from it, it is so generalized and absurd, yet coming from the very people a student relies on to approve their work. Being racially harassed by faculty in your graduate program? And what about my grandparents who did not speak English, but mined coal and built steel? And died relatively young from brutal working lives? What would you do if someone racially harassed you in an academic department? And let it be known, this person got their ideology training from Columbia Univerisity, which is apparently once source of this “white privilege” idea applied as a generality. Say, will you be my advisor or on my committee? Oh wait, I might want to re-think that.