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
- Whether UT’s consideration of race as one factor in its holistic undergraduate admissions process violated the Equal Protection Clause.
- 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.