This is the case challenging the University of Texas’s use of racial and ethnic preferences in undergraduate admissions. A three-judge panel of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit upheld the policy earlier this year, but in a fractured decision in which only one of the judges really seemed to be comfortable with what the school was doing — the other two concluding that their hands were tied by the Supreme Court’s decisions in the 2003 University of Michigan cases or the particular circumstances of the case given the Texas “top 10 percent” law. Friday’s denial of the petition for rehearing en banc was even more divided: The vote was 9–7, and among the nine were the two ambivalent panel judges. Judge Edith Jones’s dissent further tees the case up for the likely Supreme Court petition (due in mid-September) explaining how what Texas is doing goes well beyond what the Supreme Court allowed in 2003 (by, for example, attempting to achieve classroom-by-classroom rather than simply campus-wide “diversity”).

Here’s hoping the Court takes the case. PBC readers know that politically correct racial and ethnic discrimination shows no sign of dissipating in academia, and the justices need to step in.