I noted in this NRO column last week that this Thursday the Supreme Court will consider whether to grant review (again) in Fisher v. University of Texas. In that column I discuss recent freedom-of-information efforts by the Center for Equal Opportunity and the state affiliates of the National Association of Scholars demonstrating that universities are not taking the Court’s 2013 decision in Fisher seriously, which in itself is a good reason for revisiting the case.
I should also note that universities’ good faith is likewise called into question by Ms. Fisher’s reply brief, which notes, for example, UT’s decision to run a “secret, race-based admissions program for well-connected applicants” (citing the Cato Institute’s amicus brief at pages 8-12), and — referring to Stanford and Yale — that schools arrogantly “believe they can systematically destroy application files” that might open them up to antidiscrimination claims.
And then there’s the fact that, more and more, schools are discriminating against racial minorities in in name of political correctness — see, for example, the administrative complaint filed last week against Harvard by a number of Asian-American groups. The Court was right to grant review in the Fisher case last time around (I summarized the many reasons at the time here), and it should do so again.