Austin V. Fisher II: Case Study

In Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (“Fisher II”), the United States Supreme Court will decide the constitutionality of the University of Texas’s (“University”) affirmative action policy, and the impact of the Court’s decision is being widely debated. Some commentators fear that the Court is poised to end affirmative action altogether, thus causing reduction in the number of minorities who are admitted to universities across the country. Such concerns are overstated. A careful analysis of the issues in Fisher II, the Justices’ comments during oral argument, and the Court’s affirmative action jurisprudence, suggests that although the University’s admissions policy will likely meet its constitutional demise, the impact on affirmative …show more content…
First, the University enrolls nearly three-quarters of its entering class by granting automatic admission to applicants who graduate in the top ten percent of their high school classes (“Top Ten Policy”). Second, the University maintains an Academic Achievement Index (“AAI”), which results in the admission of applicants who did not graduated in the top ten percent of their class, but who nonetheless have extremely high academic credentials. Third, the University uses a holistic review process that considers an applicant’s AAI and Personal Achievement Index (“PAI”). Until 2005, the PAI was calculated based on weighted scores on two required essays and factors including, but not limited to, leadership qualities, extracurricular activities, work experience, community service, socioeconomic status, and family responsibilities. In 2005, two years after the Court’s decision in Grutter v. Bollinger, the University revised its affirmative action policy to include race in the holistic review process. However, in the University’s holistic review process that year, only 216 African-American and Hispanic students--0.9% and 2.4% of the total applicant pool--gained admission to an incoming class of 6,322. Indeed, the vast majority of the University’s minority students, some whom graduate from largely segregated high schools, are admitted through the Top Ten Program – a race-neutral process. For example, in 2008, 21.5% of the students admitted through the University’s Top Ten Percent Policy were minorities. In light of these facts, the question before the Court in Fisher II is whether the inclusion of race in the University’s holistic review process is narrowly tailored to achieve educational