David R. Frazier, Danita Delimont Photography, Newscom
In a brief urging the Supreme Court not to hear the appeal, the U. of Texas at Austin argued that the case was unripe because of a lack of disagreement among the circuit courts on the issue of affirmative action in college admissions.
By Peter Schmidt
Washington
[Updated at 3:49 p.m. with additional reaction.]
The U.S. Supreme Court announced on Tuesday that it would take up a lawsuit challenging race-conscious admissions at the University of Texas, setting the stage for it to reconsider affirmative-action policies that it had ruled constitutional in 2003, before its composition significantly changed.
The case, Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin (No. 11-345), involves an appeal of a decision last year by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit that upheld
the race-conscious admissions policies of the chief undergraduate program at the University of Texas at Austin. Among the key questions in the case is whether the university was constitutionally precluded from considering applicants’ race or ethnicity because it could achieve diversity in a race-neutral manner, through a state law guaranteeing students in the top 10th of their high-school classes admission to any public college in the state.
The Supreme Court’s decision on whether to hear the case had been expected by mid-January, but the court repeatedly put off consideration of it, for reasons left unexplained in Tuesday’s announcement. Because the court is well into its current term and has filled virtually all of its slots for hearing arguments in other cases, it is not expected to hear the Fisher case until its next term, which begins in October.
MORE.
