Our Affirmative Action Mess

Last week, the Supreme Court heard oral arguments in the much-mooted case of Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. At issue in the case was whether the University of Texas at Austin’s affirmative action program complied with the stringent legal test the Court set out in Grutter v. Bollinger (2003). Grutter held that the University of Michigan had a sufficiently “compelling state interest” in fostering a diverse student body that it could take race into account in the university admissions process, even if race-based decisions are widely unacceptable in other contexts.