President Barack Obama’s administration is supporting the race-conscious admissions system at the University of Texas at Austin, telling the U.S. Supreme Court that the educational benefits of diversity are critical to the national interest in the areas of defense, homeland security, commerce, and education.
The administration’s brief was part of the last wave of friend-of-the-court briefs in Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin. The case, to be argued Oct. 10, examines whether the university’s consideration of race as part of a “holistic review” of applicants for admissions is consistent with the 14th Amendment’s equal-protection clause.
The University of Texas reinstated consideration of race after the Supreme Court upheld a race-conscious admissions program at the University of Michigan Law School in a 2003 decision known as Grutter v. Bollinger.
