A judge dismissed a right-wing affirmative action lawsuit against a Texas university.
The ruling in favor of the University of Texas is a setback for the movement that ended race-conscious admissions.
A year after the US Supreme Court ended race-consciousness across the country, a federal judge dismissed a case claiming that the University of Texas at Austin continued to apply affirmative action policies unlawfully. The lawsuit, initially filed in 2020 by Edward Blum’s legal advocacy group Students for Fair Admissions (SFFA), indicates a setback for the conservative activist movement.
On Monday, US District Judge Robert Pitman ruled that the University of Texas, Austin’s revised admissions policies are legal under the 14th amendment of the US Constitution and Title VI of the Civil Rights Act of 1964. According to the lawsuit, in 2020, SFFA, the same group that successfully challenged race-conscious admissions at Harvard University and the University of North Carolina, claimed that at least two of its members had been “denied the opportunity to compete for admission to the Unversity of Texas, Austin on equal footing with other applicants on the basis of ethnicity or race because of UT-Austin’s discriminatory admissions policies.”
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The case was dismissed in 2021, but the SFFA appealed. Meanwhile, the group filed two similar cases against universities in SFFA v Harvard-UNC, and the resulting verdict on June 29, 2023, effectively ended affirmative action on US campuses. The University of Texas, Austin revised its policies to conform with the US Supreme Court ruling beginning with the fall 2023 admission cycle, but the SFFA claimed that the university continued to consider race in admissions.
According to Pitman, a judge appointed by Barack Obama stated, “As part of this new policy, UT Austin has instructed its admissions officers and employees accordingly, and it has also created new processes to train and supervise its admissions officers and employees to ensure that they do not consider ethnicity or race as a factor in the admissions process. Accordingly, UT Austin no longer considers race or ethnicity.” “It would be nonsensical for the Court to issue an injunction in light of the fact that UT Austin does not currently consider race or ethnicity in the admissions process.”
Critics of the University of Texas, Austin case, interpreted Monday’s decision as a setback for Blum’s ani-affirmative action movement.
According to the Educational Opportunities Project director at the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, David Hinojosa, “Despite their efforts to extend the supreme court’s Harvard ruling and aim to further diminish diversity on campuses, their strategy backfired.”
“The Lawyers’ Committee, together with our partners, remain committed to defending students’ rights, promoting diversity and justice, and ensuring equal opportunities for all qualified students. We are undeterred by Blum’s attempts to compromise fairness and civil rights.”
