The Court sent the case back in 2013, finding that the Fifth Circuit failed to conduct such an analysis before ruling in the University of Texas at Austin’s favor. Three years later, after a more thorough investigation and another favorable ruling, the Court heard the case again. This time, it decided that the university’s consideration of race in admissions was consistent with strict scrutiny and therefore permissible.
The majority’s explanation was simple. In making its case, the university had said all the right things—that it was seeking only to further the diversity of its student body; that this interest was based on an old, but not too old, study showing that certain classes at the university lacked significant minority enrollment; and that race was just one factor among many that the university considered when deciding whether to admit an applicant.
Alito disputed all this. In a dissent joined by justices John Roberts and Clarence Thomas, he argued that it was not enough for the university merely to say that such a program would lead to student-body diversity and its accompanying educational benefits. The university had to demonstrate this, presumably through some sort of quantitative analysis. To require anything less of an admissions office, Alito concluded, would be to give it complete deference in its consideration of race, something that the majority itself had said the Court could never do. Since the University of Texas hadn’t empirically shown that its use of racial preferences would increase minority enrollment in the classes that lacked it or deliver educational benefits, this policy could not, according to Alito, pass strict scrutiny. Thus, it couldn’t be considered constitutional.
Alito’s reasoning applies equally well to today’s cases.
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