Race-Based Affirmative Action Case Study

Class-Based Affirmative Action Policies After Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin

The landscape of race-based affirmative action has changed drastically since the ruling of Grutter v. Bollinger in 2003 Gurin, Lehman, Lewis, Gurin, and Dey (2004). In 1997, Barbara Grutter sued the University of Michigan’s Law School admission policy of race-conscious affirmative action (Gurin, et al., 2004). The Supreme Court ultimately ruled that “student body diversity is a compelling state interest that can justify using race in university admissions…” (Gurin, et al., 2004, p. 98). This ruling is significant because it found that institutional interest in diversity is not only convincing for educational pedagogy, but also for students’ future civic duties

University of Texas at Austin. In 2008, Abigail Fisher sued UT-Austin because she believed that their race-conscious admissions policy prevented her from being accepted into the university (Hoover, 2016). The court upheld the decision that stated that schools can admit students based on racial preference. Since 2008, schools have been more compelled to focus on the greater question of access for low-income and underrepresented students (Hoover, 2016). Hoover 2016, mentions that “Race and class are different threads, but they often entwine. Since Fisher arose, scholars and students alike have helped college leaders see how socioeconomic disparities, and not just race, shape students’ experiences.” (Pg#?) The crucial question coming out of this decision is what (if any) affirmative action admissions policies help the representation of disadvantaged groups. Some scholars believe that a less blatant class-based admissions policy can maintain or increase on-campus diversity. This paper examines the research looking a SES affirmative action policies and determines if they result in a level of diversity greater than or equal to the level achieved through race-conscious admissions. In this paper, we use SES-, income-, and class-based affirmative action interchangeable as well as race-based and race-conscious affirmative