The death of the longtime Supreme Court justice and conservative stalwart Antonin Scalia has widespread ramifications for American politics and policy. For higher education, the most immediately apparent consequence is for Fisher v. University of Texas at Austin, the landmark legal challenge to race-conscious admissions that is pending before the court.
A short history of the case: Abigail N. Fisher sued the university in 2008, asserrting she had been unfairly denied admission to the university because of the flagship campus’s race-conscious admissions policy. In 2013 the Supreme Court ruled that the lower court — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit — had not sufficiently scrutinized the university’s policy in its decision that found in Austin’s favor. After the appeals court again ruled that the policy could stand, the case was appealed to the high court a second time. The justices heard oral arguments in December.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education.
And for more information on ‘Fisher’ in the broader context of higher education, check out this collection of reports from The Chronicle of Higher Education.