It’s Not Just in the Numbers: Making Campus Diversity Work Post-Schuette - Higher Education: he April 22 U.S. Supreme Court ruling on Schuette v. Coalition to Defend Affirmative Action is the court’s latest ruling to address use of race in college admissions. Unlike previous high-profile cases — namely, Fisher v. University of Texas, Grutter and Gratz v. Bollinger, and Regents of the University of California v. Bakke — the Schuette case centered not on the legality of race-conscious admissions policies but rather on the constitutionality of voter-approved bans of this practice. The court found that Michigan’s 2006 ban is constitutional.
While the Schuette ruling is disappointing, it does affirm the ability of institutions in the vast majority of states to decide for themselves whether race should be a consideration in admissions decisions — and the Department of Education last week sent that point home. It does not, however, protect other states from similar campaigns to ban the practice, as recently explicated by researcher Matt Gaertner. So the clock is ticking.
