## Facts

- The University of Texas at Austin filled its undergraduate class through a two-part admissions system for the 2008 entering class.
- Most seats were awarded under Texas’s Top Ten Percent Law, which guaranteed admission to in-state students graduating in the top 10% of their high school class.
- Remaining seats were filled through holistic review using an Academic Index (academic measures) and a Personal Achievement Index (PAI).
- The PAI combined essay scores and a personal achievement score assessing leadership, work experience, extracurriculars, community service, and “special circumstances.”
- “Special circumstances” included multiple factors such as socioeconomic and family background, school context, and race as one factor among many in individualized review.
- After concluding that the Top Ten Percent Law did not produce sufficient minority representation in many classrooms and programs, UT reintroduced limited race-conscious consideration within the holistic review pool.
- Abigail Fisher and Rachel Michalewicz, white Texas residents, were denied admission and challenged the use of race in admissions under the Equal Protection Clause.
- The district court granted summary judgment to UT, and the applicants appealed.

## Issues

1. Whether UT Austin’s consideration of race as one factor in holistic review for non–Top Ten Percent applicants violates the Equal Protection Clause.
2. Whether the program satisfies strict scrutiny by serving a compelling interest and being narrowly tailored, given the existence of a substantial race-neutral admissions pathway.

## Decision

- The Fifth Circuit affirmed summary judgment for UT and upheld the admissions policy.
- The court applied strict scrutiny and accepted student-body diversity, including classroom-level diversity, as a compelling interest under controlling Supreme Court precedent.
- The court held UT’s use of race was narrowly tailored because it operated within individualized holistic review, avoided quotas and fixed racial targets, and limited explicit consideration of race to a subset of applicants.
- The court concluded UT had sufficiently evaluated race-neutral measures and reasonably determined they did not fully achieve its diversity objectives.

## Legal Principles

- Racial classifications in public university admissions are subject to strict scrutiny: they must further a compelling governmental interest and be narrowly tailored.
- A university may treat the educational benefits of student-body diversity as a compelling interest, with some deference to its academic judgment about educational mission and needs.
- Narrow tailoring in admissions permits race to be considered as a non-dispositive “plus” factor within individualized holistic review, while prohibiting quotas, set-asides, and mechanical point systems tied to race.
- The existence of a race-neutral mechanism that increases diversity does not automatically bar supplemental limited race-conscious measures if the institution reasonably concludes race-neutral measures alone leave material gaps in achieving its diversity goals.

## Conclusion

The Fifth Circuit held that UT Austin’s hybrid admissions system—dominated by a race-neutral Top Ten Percent pathway and supplemented by limited consideration of race as one factor in holistic review—survived strict scrutiny and did not violate the Equal Protection Clause.


Fisher v. Univ. of Tex. at Austin, 631 F.3d 213 (5th Cir. 2011)