## Facts

- The University of Texas at Austin (UT) admitted most undergraduates through Texas’s Top Ten Percent Law, which guaranteed admission to students graduating near the top of their high school classes.
- UT filled the remaining seats through a holistic process using an Academic Index and a Personal Achievement Index that considered multiple factors, including race as one “special circumstance.”
- UT reinstated limited race consideration after a study concluded that race-neutral measures, including heavy reliance on the Top Ten Percent Law, did not yield sufficient educational benefits associated with diversity, particularly within classes and programs.
- Abigail Noel Fisher, a white applicant, was denied admission for the Fall 2008 entering class and was not eligible for automatic admission under the Top Ten Percent Law.
- Fisher sued, alleging UT’s consideration of race in admissions violated the Equal Protection Clause.
- After earlier Supreme Court review requiring full strict scrutiny on narrow tailoring, the lower courts again upheld UT’s policy; the Supreme Court granted certiorari and reviewed the policy as applied when Fisher applied.

## Issues

1. Whether UT’s consideration of race as one factor in its holistic undergraduate admissions process violated the Equal Protection Clause.
2. Whether UT proved, under strict scrutiny, that its race-conscious measure was narrowly tailored and that workable race-neutral alternatives would not achieve comparable diversity-related educational benefits in a tolerable manner.

## Decision

- The Supreme Court affirmed the judgment upholding UT’s policy by a 4–3 vote (Justice Kagan recused).
- The Court held that UT’s admissions program, as implemented for Fisher’s application cycle, satisfied strict scrutiny.
- The Court accepted student body diversity’s educational benefits as a compelling interest when pursued through concrete, reviewable objectives rather than racial balancing.
- The Court concluded UT’s limited use of race as a component of a broader holistic review for a minority of seats was narrowly tailored, given the evidentiary record about insufficient classroom-level diversity under race-neutral measures.
- The Court emphasized UT’s continuing obligation to periodically reassess whether race remains necessary and to ensure race plays no greater role than needed.

## Legal Principles

- Racial classifications by a public university in admissions are subject to strict scrutiny, and the university bears the burden of proving narrow tailoring.
- A university may pursue the educational benefits of diversity as a compelling interest if it articulates sufficiently concrete objectives that permit judicial review and are not framed as achieving a particular racial quota.
- Narrow tailoring requires evidence-based consideration of whether workable race-neutral alternatives would achieve comparable diversity-related educational benefits in a tolerable manner.
- Limited consideration of race as one factor among many in individualized review can be consistent with narrow tailoring, particularly where its effect is meaningful but constrained.
- Compliance with strict scrutiny is not permanent; institutions must periodically reassess necessity and efficacy and limit race consideration to what is necessary.

## Conclusion

The Court upheld UT’s race-conscious holistic admissions component as constitutional because UT supported, with record evidence, that race-neutral measures did not sufficiently achieve diversity’s educational benefits and because the use of race was limited, individualized, and subject to ongoing review under strict scrutiny.


Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 579 U.S. 365 (2016)