SUMMARY: The Harvard admissions trial in Boston concluded Friday and it could have implications for affirmative action nationwide. The case alleges that qualified Asian-American applicants were denied admission because Harvard used other, non-academic measures to keep their numbers down. William Brangham discusses the case with Kirk Carapezza from WGBH as part of our special look at “rethinking college.”
SUMMARY: The Trump administration came out against Harvard University's admission practices on Thursday. A legal battle brought by a group of Asian Americans against one of the most selective schools in the world is heading to federal court this fall, and is being widely watched across the country. John Yang talks with Katie Benner of The New York Times about the future of affirmative action in higher ed.
SUMMARY: The reduced Supreme Court weighed in on two politically charged cases Thursday. Justices confirmed the constitutionality of a college affirmative action program, but deadlocked on President Obama's executive action protecting millions of unauthorized immigrants from deportation -- thus nullifying the order. Judy Woodruff talks to Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal about the day in court.
JUDY WOODRUFF (NewsHour): We return to the big day at the Supreme Court. A split on immigration puts millions in limbo. And justices uphold affirmative action.
We dig into both cases now with “NewsHour” regular Marcia Coyle, chief Washington correspondent of “The National Law Journal.”
Marcia.
MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal: Judy.
JUDY WOODRUFF: We know we need you here on days like this, especially on days like this.
(LAUGHTER)
JUDY WOODRUFF: Let's talk about the affirmative action case first.
MARCIA COYLE: OK.
JUDY WOODRUFF: What was it that the University of Texas case was about?
MARCIA COYLE: Well, actually, this was the second time the Supreme Court had looked at how the University of Texas uses race as a factor in its admissions policy.
Back in 2013, the case came to the Supreme Court by Abigail Fisher, a student who was denied admission to the university in 2008. And she claimed that the use of race as factor was why she was denied admission and that it violated the Constitution.
The Supreme Court, in 2013, led by Justice Kennedy, a 7-1 court, sent it back to the lower federal court, saying, you gave too much deference to the university's explanation. You have to give the toughest scrutiny we have under the Constitution, and the university has shown — has to show there are no workable race-neutral alternatives.
Well, that lower federal appellate court held hearings, briefings, upheld the plan again. It came back to the Supreme Court. Abigail Fisher brought it back with a conservative organization that had backed her from the beginning. And the Supreme Court today, in a surprising 4-3 decision, upheld the university's use of race, as Justice Kennedy said, a factor of factor of a factor.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Why do you say surprising?
MARCIA COYLE: He had never voted to uphold an affirmative action plan, although he had written and spoken about the importance of diversity in higher education. So, he did believe that it was an important, compelling interest to have a diverse student body.
JUDY WOODRUFF: Now, this was — there were some really strong opinions voiced here. Justice Alito wrote, this is affirmative action gone wild?
MARCIA COYLE: Gone berserk, that's what he said.
SUMMARY: The Supreme Court's deadlock on President Obama's executive action preventing deportation of unauthorized immigrants represents the latest blow to the administration's attempts at immigration reform. For more on the cases for and against the President's initiative, Judy Woodruff talks to Angela Maria Kelley of the Center for American Progress and Jon Feere of the Center for Immigration studies.
SUMMARY: Syndicated columnist Mark Shields and New York Times columnist David Brooks join Judy Woodruff to discuss the week’s news, including the Supreme Court upholding the right of Michigan citizens to say you can't use race as a criteria for college admission, a new expansive gun rights law in Georgia and an update on four Senate races in the South.
Update April 23, 2014: The Supreme Court upheld Michigan’s voter-approved ban on affirmative action for women and racial minorities at public universities. While the Court did not prohibit affirmative action altogether, it’s likely that other states may follow Michigan’s lead in eliminating the consideration of race in higher education and other areas.
Affirmative action occupies a telling place in a nation painfully aware of its racial inequities yet painfully divided over how to solve them.
Great numbers of Americans support the overarching goals of assuring equal access to educational opportunity and maintaining racial diversity in the country's institutions of higher learning. At the same time, polls show Americans are deeply conflicted – often along racial lines – about policies that achieve those goals by allowing colleges to use race as a factor in their admissions decisions.
The latest chapter in this national struggle was supposed to come with the U.S. Supreme Court's consideration of an affirmative action case involving a white student and the University of Texas. But the ruling – announced Monday amid much anticipation – merely sent the case back to the lower courts for reconsideration.
Affirmative action, in its threadbare form, lives for now. But there was enough in Monday's opinion to suspect it will be diminished further in time.
All of which makes it an opportune moment to think again about what some people think could be a fairer and more palatable way of ensuring diversity on America's campuses – affirmative action based on class. The idea seems simple enough: This approach would give poor students of any race a helping hand into college, and any policy that gives an admissions boost to lower-income students would naturally benefit significant numbers of black and Latino students.
Richard Kahlenberg, a senior fellow at the progressive think-tank The Century Foundation, is one of the principal proponents of what has come to be called "the economic integration movement."
"My primary interest is in ensuring that we have a fair process that looks at the biggest disadvantages that people face today, which I see as class-based," Kahlenberg said in a recent interview. "That will end up helping low-income and working-class students of all races."
Kahlenberg knows that many dispute this belief. But he says skepticism directed at the class-based solution has to be weighed against its dim alternative: If race-based affirmative action disappears with no program to replace it, African Americans and Latinos on college campuses will disappear too. Studies show that African-American and Latino enrollment at the nation's top 200 colleges would plummet by two-thirds if colleges stopped considering race when deciding whom to accept.
Yet ignoring race does not wipe its effects away. A formula that uses class while disregarding race may be politically popular, but many scholars say race remains so powerful a factor that a class-based system would seriously reduce black and Latino representation at American colleges from their current levels.
At the heart of their argument: Poor white Americans are still privileged when compared to poor African Americans and Latinos. Use class as the basis for admissions preference, studies show, and the nation's colleges will be flush with poor white students. "There are disadvantages that accrue to African Americans and Latinos that are not explained by class," said Anthony Carnevale, director of the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce. "You simply cannot get race by using class."
The idea of abandoning race for an admissions system targeting those clinging to the bottom rungs of the economic ladder holds powerful sway for many who believe that in modern America race is no longer much of an obstacle to success.
There is no doubt that the greatest imbalance in American colleges is not white versus black or male versus female. It is the wealthy versus everybody else.
Kahlenberg asserts that affluent students – those whose families earn at least $123,000 a year – outnumber poor students by 25-1 on the campuses of the nation's most select schools. He said that while white Americans are twice as likely to earn a college degree as black Americans, the affluent are seven times as likely to earn one as the poor.
According to the most recent data available, about three-quarters of students at the nation's top 146 universities come from families in the upper quarter of the nation's economic scale. Just 3 percent come from the bottom quarter. A study released this year by The Brookings Institution documented how selective colleges enroll nearly all of the high-achieving high school seniors from families in the highest income quartile, but just one-third of the top low-income students.
SUMMARY: The Supreme Court upheld a ban on affirmative action in Michigan; at least seven other states have enacted similar laws. A New York Times study looking at five states found that African-American and Latino enrollment fell immediately at flagship schools. Gwen Ifill gets views from Dennis Parker of the American Civil Liberties Union and Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity.
GWEN IFILL (NewsHour): Affirmative action made its reappearance at the Supreme Court today, as the justices weighed in on a Michigan ballot initiative that banned public colleges from using race as a factor in admissions.
By an unusually lopsided 6-2 decision, the justices dealt a blow to proponents of affirmative action, allowing Michigan to join several other states that have already banned or limited the practice.
For more on the court’s reasoning, we turn to Marcia Coyle of “The National Law Journal,” who was at the court today.
So, that 6-2 decision, that kind of tells the tale, doesn’t it?
MARCIA COYLE, The National Law Journal: It does, Gwen.
The justices who were in among the six had different reasons for why they concluded that there was nothing wrong with Michigan’s ban here. Justice Kennedy really wrote the lead opinion, and he was joined by the chief justice and Justice Samuel Alito.
Justice Kennedy seemed to take pains to make clear when he read a summary of his opinion from the bench that this case was really not about the constitutionality or the merits of race-conscious admissions, but it was really about who should make the determination about those merits.
And he said that there was nothing in the Constitution or the court’s earlier decisions that allowed the judiciary, gave it the authority to take from the voters under their own state laws the right to debate, learn and then act through their political process to resolve that debate.
SUMMARY: The Supreme Court heard arguments on whether Michigan voters can pass a law that prohibits racial preference in college admissions. Gwen Ifill gets background from Marcia Coyle of the National Law Journal, plus views from Lee Bollinger of Columbia University and Joshua Thompson, an attorney with the Pacific Legal Foundation.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): The debate over affirmative action returned to the Supreme Court today, this time in the form of a challenge to a Michigan law that would ban its use at public universities.
We begin our coverage with NewsHour regular Marcia Coyle of The National Law Journal, who of course was in the courtroom today, as always, Marcia.
GWEN IFILL (Newshour): The Supreme Court heard arguments today in one of the most closely watched cases of the term. It marked a return to the decades-long legal debate over affirmative action.
The scene outside the Supreme Court building made clear just how anticipated this case has been.
For the first time in nearly a decade, the justices are considering whether it's constitutional for universities to use race in deciding who they admit.
The suit was brought by Abigail Fisher, a white honor roll student who was denied admission at the University of Texas at Austin in 2008.
Fisher, now 22, was in the court chamber today and later spoke briefly to reporters.
ABIGAIL FISHER, plaintiff: I hope the court rules that a student's race and ethnicity shouldn't be considered when applying to the University of Texas.
GWEN IFILL: Her lawyer, Bert Rein, said it comes down to equal protection under the law.
BERT REIN, attorney For Abigail Fisher: We have recognized that there are some interests in diversity that are beneficial in the educational sphere.
But we have said and we continue to say that is not an overriding consideration that has to be administered very narrowly, because -- because it's an odious and dangerous classification.
