Word came late yesterday that the US Supreme Court had unanimously reversed three lower-court decisions ordering Texas to reconfigure in-state legislative boundaries along racial lines. Roger Clegg of the Center for Equal Opportunity expalins the specifics here. As he notes, it’s beyond irony that the 1965 Voting Rights Act, intended to outlaw racial segregation once and for all, was invoked in these cases to effectively mandate it.
Although this decision is not directly concerned with academic matters, it’s obviously of interest to us in light of another Texas case, Fisher v. Texas, for which we’ve signed onto an amicus brief petitioning the SC to reverse a lower court’s upholding the use of race-based admissions in the University of Texas. To date, the SC has not granted certiorari, and you can’t assume that because the court issued this decision today, it will follow suit and accept the Fisher appeal tomorrow.
Still, we’re moderately hopeful that the court will do so, and reverse or at least trim back its unfortunate ruling in the 2003 Grutter case, which was not a good day for opponents of racial preferences.
