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Supreme Court Upholds Affirmative Action in UT Case

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On Thursday, the Supreme Court turned down a challenge to affirmative action. Fisher v. University of Texas basically allows the University of Texas to continue making admission decisions as they have been including the use of affirmative action.

Laurence H. Tribe, a law professor at Harvard told the New York Times, “No decision since Brown v. Board of Education has been as important as Fisher will prove to be in the long history of racial inclusion and educational diversity.” (If you need a history refresher, Brown v. Board of Education ended racial segregation in public schools.)

Obama celebrates the decision as well while Roger Clegg, the president of the Center for Equal Opportunity, is disappointed but says the “court’s decision leaves plenty of room for future challenges to racial preference policies at other schools.”

UT students are mostly accepted by the Top 10 Percent program which says that high school graduates in the top 10% of their class will be automatically accepted. The rest of their admitted students are considered with their academic achievements and other aspects like race and ethnicity in mind. In 2003, Justice Sandra Day O’Connor said that perhaps “25 years from now use of racial preferences will no longer be necessary.”