he Supreme Court brokered a compromise on affirmative action in college admissions Monday, telling courts to look more closely at the justifications for such programs but keeping alive for now the use of race to achieve diversity. The court voted 7 to 1 to send the University of Texasâs race-conscious admissions plan back for further judicial view, and told the lower court to apply strict scrutiny, the toughest judicial evaluation of whether a governmentâs action is allowed. âA university must make a showing that its plan is narrowly tailored to achieve the only interest that this Court has approved in this context: the benefits of a student body diversity that âencompasses a . . . broad array of qualifications and characteristics of which racial or ethnic origin is but a single though important element,â â wrote Justice Anthony M. Kennedy. The decision could spawn challenges of race-conscious admissions decisions elsewhere, but stopped short of ruling out the use of race, as affirmative action opponents had urged. The ruling likely came of sharp disagreements among the justices that are absent from Kennedyâs 13-page opinion. The case was argued in October. Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg was the only dissenter, saying the lower courts already had performed the tasks the Supreme Court set out. Justice Clarence Thomas continued to note his belief that affirmative action programs are unconstitutional. (more) http://www.washingtonpost.com/polit...8-bc2ac7cd44e2_story.html?tid=pm_politics_pop
Cowards in Black Robes. The plaintiff in this case had one big problem to overcome. She's white. If she's black it's a slam dunk decision in her favor. Let's take the exact same circumstances. Same school, same grades, same everything, except the girl is black. Now tell me that the court would have made the same decision. The girl was denied entry based solely upon the color of her skin. That's racism. I thought race was illegal in determining entry into education, jobs, housing, etc. Apparently not. Maybe she would have had better luck calling herself an undocumented minority.
Cowards is right. They could have corrected the lower court themselves and avoided this floating through the system for another year at great expense to the parties.