Abigail Fisher Case Summary

Affirmative Action. For many Texas high school students, these two words haunt them. Their future, or at least their future at the University of Texas, depends on these words. For Abigail Noel Fisher, a 2008 graduate from Sugar Land, Texas, affirmative action and its race bias policies allegedly ruined her chances of getting into this prestigious state university. Fisher argues that race should not be a factor in college admissions processes, Fisher argues for equality. Equality in respect to race is in our constitution; it surrounds us everyday. In theory, race should be irrelevant in this day and age. Humanity has established that one race is not superior to another, so why should race matter at all in the college admissions process? Why should the University of Texas, or any other university, have that “check your race” box on their applications? Abigail Fisher, and every other person applying to the university, deserves as much opportunity as every other student of any race. When it comes to college, intelligence and character should be key to admission- not the color of the applicant’s skin. The University of Texas’ current affirmative action policy is an unfair college admissions process that the Supreme Court should ban so that admissions are based on intellectual ability in high school, national testing scores, extracurricular activities, and community service; this should be changed so that every person,

There have been many cases before the United States Supreme Court similar to Mary Hamilton’s, including one that is currently pending. In an ongoing case, Fisher v. University of Texas (2012), Abigail Fisher, a Caucasian female, filed a lawsuit against the University because she was denied admission. Fisher argued that the University was discriminating in its selections based on race. The University argued that the factor of race in the admissions process was solely in the interest of promoting educational diversity. If the admissions of a school call for measures to be taken to ensure diversity, then the policies in place must be reviewed under a standard of strict scrutiny to determine if they are precisely tailored to serve a compelling governmental interest (oyez.org). In Fisher v. University of Texas, the examination of strict scrutiny was not sufficiently conducted and is going to be argued once more on December 9, 2015. In this situation, using the factor of race in an admissions process is

Legal Question: The legal issue presented in this case ultimately questioned the University of Michigan’s admission policy which sought a more diverse student body. The court addressed whether the University of Michigan’s use of racial preferences in the admission process violated

The University of Texas at Austin is a world renown school with an acceptance rate of 40.2% as of 2013. Abigail Fisher, a white woman from Texas, sued the University of Texas for racial discrimination in the university’s admission program. Ms. Fisher lost her district court case and the Fifth Circuit Case three to zero; but the Supreme Court accepted her appeal for another trial. Due to Ms. Fisher not being able to attend The University of Texas, she was accepted into Louisiana State University shortly after. At LSU, she filed the lawsuit against the University of Texas to prohibit the university to use race as a factor in the future admission process.

The petitioner Abigail N. Fisher, who is a woman of Caucasian decent, applied to the University of Texas in late 2008 (“Fisher v. University of Texas.”). Since Fisher was not ranked at the top of her class her application was denied (“Fisher v. University of Texas.”). The former University of Texas applicant Abigail N. Fisher believes that the Institutions discriminatory admission policies was the reason she did not get admitted into the school for the incoming freshman class of 2009, even though her application was much better than many of the admitted minority students. Fisher then filed a suit case against the University arguing that the University of Texas admission policy was a violation of the Fourteenth Amendment, which states it forbids

In the case of Grutter v. Bollinger (2002) was a highly divided decision, the U.S. Supreme Court approved the use of race in admission decisions on a time-limited basis to further the educational benefits that flow from a diverse

So when Abigail Fisher wanted to follow in her father’s footsteps and attend the university she would have to make it on her own, with no special consideration (Nieli, 2013). The state of Texas has enacted the Top Ten Percent Law that gives students graduating in the Top Ten Percent of their high school automatic admission to any Texas public school. Unfortunately, Fisher failed to meet this requirement, and hoped to get admitted through this alternative admission track that takes academic achievement, extracurricular activities, and numerous other things including race and ethnicity. Considering her GPA and SAT scores were higher than most of the students admitted in this fashion, she felt she would easily gain admission this way. When that didn’t happen she felt if she had been a black or Hispanic student and had her same credentials she would have easily been accepted. Fishers’ attorney argued that the University had not been in compliance with the constitutional review. (Nieli, 2013)After losing two appeals, both in the district court and circuit court they appealed to the Supreme Court. The University of Texas gave great transparency in its admission process and gave other universities an outline on how to justify the need for their Affirmative Action Policies. In regards to their policy the University of Texas highlighted the need to deal with students feeling racially isolated or alone. In 2013, the time of Fishers’ litigation African American Students made up less than 5% while Latinos made up about 15% of the student body as compared to Latinos 38% state representation (Hawkins, 2016)Texas’s argued institutions need to leverage the educational benefit of diversity, the need for polices such as affirmative action exists as a result of the lingering effect of discrimination, and that these policies are helping the underrepresented minority groups

Firstly, I’d like to talk of how and why Fisher’s claim and argument was weak. She didn’t really have a valid claim for the fact being that she was applying to a school that was trying to promote diversity at the time and still is today. A school that had an ethnic distribution of one percent American Indian, twenty percent Asian, five percent African-American, three percent Foreign, twenty-three percent Hispanic, one

Recently the Supreme Court made a ruling that gave schools across the country a higher standard to abide by when using affirmative action when making admission decisions. This case was brought to attention by Abigail Fisher, a white women rejected by the University of Texas. The verdict was a tame one and ruled in favor of Fisher with admissions requiring ““no workable race-neutral alternatives” when a student’s acceptance status is determined. This avoided much debate compared to the capacity the Court has for changing the nation.

While applying to colleges, Abigail Fisher had relatively average academic qualifications. She finished high school with a 3.59 GPA and an 1180/1600 on the SAT. Because her GPA did not place her in the top 10, she was forced the compete in the holistic application review process. In this process, her Personal Achievement Index was calculated (as described in a previous section) and compared to other applicants that weren’t admitted under the top 10% rule. However, her PAI was relatively low compared to other applicants. For the 2008 entering class, 81% were admitted under

It has been argued that Fisher III neither provides any substantive additions to Equal Protection Clause (EPC) Jurisprudence, nor any guidance to lower courts how to apply Grutter and determine whether a race-based admissions program is consistent with the Fourteenth Amendment. Danielle Holley-Walker, in her article published in winter of 2014, explores the impact Fisher III has on race-conscious admissions programs, and argues that Fisher III enhances the strict scrutiny analysis, especially when compared to Grutter. Moreover, she argues “Justice Ginsburg’s dissent meaningfully highlights one of the most pernicious flaws in the current Equal Protection Clause jurisprudence, which is that strict scrutiny standard encourages universities to make their admissions process opaque instead of transparent and that there are many benefits that flow from having a transparent, race-conscious admissions program.”

One of the most problematic and controversial issues in The United States of America is affirmative action. Affirmative action is a policy of affording minorities certain privileges in order to combat the historical prejudice against them. In an effort to redress the historical injustices faced by African Americans, Hispanics, and other minorities, universities and employers across the nation have taken race into account when admitting students or hiring employees. Abigail Fisher, of Texas, applied for admission into the University of Texas at Austin (UT) and was denied; she sued the public university on the grounds of racial discrimination or reverse racism in the supreme court case Fisher v University of Texas.

& Martinez, 2003). The Supreme Court ruled that the University of California was wrong in the way they approached a special admissions program that was open only to minority applicants (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). The ruling argued that the special admissions program violated the equal protection clause of the Fourteenth Amendment (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). Justice Lewis Powell, Jr. stated in his opinion on the Bakke case that quotas “would hinder rather than further attainment of genuine diversity” (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003, p. 141). Justice Powell, Jr. also wrote that race is only one part of many factors that an institution can consider in truly achieving a heterogeneous student population (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003). By siding with Bakke in this case, the Supreme Court essentially outlawed the use of racial quotas in admissions processes in higher education, yet universities took this as it is okay to use race as a selective factor as long as there are no quotas (Aguirre Jr. & Martinez, 2003).

Colleges and Universities are still trying to move beyond race-based admissions. In the case of a young woman who applied to the University of Washington who talks about her home life with her father abusing her mother and her mother abusing drugs. This essay from the high school senior impacted the readers into helping to ban affirmative action from university admissions. In February, Florida joined the growing number of states that struck affirmative action from admissions. California in 1996, voters eliminated race-based admissions policies, and the same year, the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals did the same in Texas in Hopwood vs. State of Texas. The University of Massachusetts Amherst and the University of Virginia have elected to significantly reduce the role of

“The Supreme Court will begin hearing arguments tomorrow in Fisher v. University of Texas, a constitutional challenge to race-conscious admission policies at colleges and universities.” (Kerby, Sophia). In the event that the Court bars the utilization of race in inductions, it will eradicate 50 years of advancement and debilitate colleges' endeavors to make school facilities more various and comprehensive. It will make